Category: poetry

Kafka’s Sister’s Braid During the occupation Ottla divorced her non-Jewish husband to save him and their daughters. Her black eyes and black mouth twisted into […]

Looking For Forests After the vet put Simba down he lent you a shovel dumped the limp body into your arms and told you to […]

The Melon   like inhaling a part of memory I slice into the net-like rind of a perfect melon   two halves separate and fall […]

  Outstretched limbs trail faded, crisp tefillin strips, ushering the rising tongues that seek a fresh bed of ash for every generation   _______   […]

  Forever Shiva   My mother’s mood was for talking and mine, for listening: stories of childhood on Chicago’s old West Side, reiterative: handsome adored […]

  Donning my IDF uniform of coarse green cloth I become one of them a shapeless fighter one of many, my individuality  no longer identifiable […]

  Vashti knew the navy couch. People call her difficult; they don’t know she waited all her life to say no. A dance with destiny […]

  This small blue box,  four inches tall,  holds forty-four candles.   Exactly enough for eight nights provided one or more are not broken, misshapen,  […]

  Tragedy   And the thing they don’t tell you about a national tragedy is that the personal tragedies don’t cease her son’s untimely passing, […]

  On this Tisha B’Av, I thought of my wife-in-law in Israel. My husband and his ex are both Americans, working together online to secure […]

Lemon Trees Don’t Grow in Poland lemon trees don’t grow in Poland – she tells me,but they do grow outside her den window. Great bursts […]

  My Great Grandmother Fannie   Living with an aunt, her parents dead, she departs from a dot on the map, the village of Horby […]

  In the Middle    1.   Ghosts dreamed in the space between my parents.  I read the reflection in their longing (though I didn’t […]

  Tribe   I’m driving towards Santa Fe with my old friend. Around us a landscape as alien as the moon. Sandy ground with tumbleweed […]

  Newcomers   The only Jews in town, my father’s family was respected. The churchgoers in Red Oak, Iowa considered them People of the Book […]

  Diaspores   A broken clothesline leans against its shadow   nothing to hang memories on   through the stillness of the desert landscape I […]

  אמא   with an extended index-finger tracing circles in the air you said: “the end must be the beginning it’s all a big loop” lounging […]

  Last Will and Testament Thomas Mann has returned to the city of Lübeck.  The municipal elders have gathered to welcome him home. He‘s old. […]

  On A Crowded Bus             after Ryzard Krynicki A bus from El Paso is nothing like a train from Friedrichstraße station with its memorial to the children […]