Catherine Gonick – Two Poems

The only Jews in town, my father’s family

was respected. The churchgoers

in Red Oak, Iowa considered them

People of the Book they hadn’t read.

Kindergarten was a huge surprise,

a place where everyone spoke

another language and no one

understood my father’s.

By the time a boy on the playground

told him the Jews killed Christ,

my father knew enough English

to ask, “Who’s that?”

I don’t know if his parents, Yiddish

speaking atheists from Odessa, offered

an answer to his question. In 1916,

America was at peace, little boys

in Red Oak could still watch horses

pull a fire engine through the streets, and,

as People of the Book, my grandparents

might have felt safe there from pogroms.

I’d like to have seen my grandfather’s shop 

in Oakland, lit up from outside

by street lamps when night

fell early in winter. He was closed 

on kratsmach, the day

Jews had to scratch a living

while customers stayed

home for Christmas.

It took an educated eye

to buy and sell antiques

as he learned to do. Falling

asleep, I wish I could hear

his voice again,

which I can’t remember,

can barely remember his face, only

his presence. I wake as a child

this morning, my disordered

bed warm with body traces.

My past changes without me,

an empty house

that continues to weather.

No one knew where

my grandfather came from,

if he was born

in Warsaw or Odessa.

An orphan is on his own. 

His past changes too, now,

long after he might have told me

to pay attention if

I don’t want to miss the details.