Brown is More Than a Color
There between red and yellow lives the color brown.
My given name, Bryna, translates to brown.
Bryna, my immigrant great-grandmother.
Bryna, whose sheitl covered her hair, once brown.
Bryna doesn’t require anything from the throat
like Chana or Chava. It’s prettier than brown.
Roasted chicken skin, caramelized onions,
kishka with gravy, tender brisket—all brown.
Brown doesn’t bother anyone. Barely gets noticed.
Bryna’s wagging finger demands beyond brown.
When there are too many Barbaras
I think about a permanent switch to Bryna, brown.
But the name only works in the shtetl of Yiddish class,
where students know the meaning of my name, brown.
Where I, this Bryna, could be the name of a poet
penning lyrics to klezmer melody fiddling thunderous brown.
~
A Village of Ghosts
After La Ciudad Luminosa (The Luminous City) by Alice Rahon (Mexico, b. France), 1948
In Zaromb, houses etched into black background, a colorful display. Because the shtetl’s Jews were rounded up and murdered outside town. Satellite dishes now receptive on tar paper roofs. But the ghosts still linger. They finger the gouged out doorjambs where their mezuzot once blessed the houses. They still swim in the Brok on Sunday afternoons even though the river has shrunk to a cesspool and the fields are full of goldenrod, no longer wheat. They jammer in Yiddish. They hear each other, but I can hear them, too. I can see the little ones racing down the alleys to get to kheder, the cholera no longer wracking their bodies. I can see Velvel the fishmonger shooing a cat from his threshold. Shmul the tavernkeeper pushing a drunkard out in the street. My great-grandfather in his long beard and black coat dipping his pen into ink before casting his calligraphy onto parchment. I pass the Zarombers in the street, say Shalom Aleichem and receive an Aleichem Shalom in return. I sit down with a sketchpad on the knoll by the Andrzejewo bridge, color a piece of paper with all my crayons. Take a paper clip and etch what I see before it all disappears in the smoke of Treblinka.
~
My Silent Grandmother
I remember Grandpa’s phlegmy cough
and the way he stood at the top of our stairs
in his long johns on Erev Yontif. But I don’t know
whether your cough was wet or dry,
deep or shallow, whether you covered your mouth
or kept tissues up your sleeves.
I remember Grandpa’s scratchy voice
like days’ old beard stubble. He had
no Yiddish accent. But I don’t know
what your voice sounded like,
soprano or alto, scratchy or smooth.
I remember Grandpa’s snickered laugh
like he was the only one who got the punchline.
But I don’t know what your glee sounded like,
a giggle, guffaw, or snort.
I wish tape recorders and voice mail had
been around while you were alive. That someone,
perhaps my father, who loved recording equipment,
could have documented your voice, its tenor,
its pace, its meter. I saved his voice mails
just to hear, This is your father. But I have nothing
of you except voiceless photographs. I study them
to find the real you and comfort myself
with the voice I can only imagine.
___________