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In the Middle
1.
Ghosts dreamed in the space between my parents.
I read the reflection in their longing (though I didn’t know
the ache.) Grown, I found love to suit my own purposes,
wind outside a river house singing to reeds and catkins,
foghorn where soffits unseen—could they reveal
creatures encased in robes of silt? Older child,
I should have known, stories of sodden marriages
between elements.
2.
Now I’m left to parse a marriage of my own, our voices
sifted soil in an excavation. Maybe one day
small household idols mentioned in the bible as lost
will be discovered behind a shelf, intact. Don’t worry,
says Jacob, who placates others, strategies of a businessman
more than a warrior, fooling other tribes
to save his own.
3.
On Passover, we are Jews escaping slavery in Egypt,
our host saying answer questions where
there are no answers to acknowledge the mess
between nations. Most want peace, as if
they’ve stashed away electric memories and only now
reveal them, as if peace ever materialized. One man says
he was born the year Israel was made a state
and would like that spirit to return.
We sing Let My People Go
תן לאנשי ללכת
4.
We recite the plagues in unison, dip fingers in wine,
lay drops out one-by-one on our plate. Dam – blood.
Told to feel sorry for killing of the firstborn. We’ve suffered
and should help others who suffer. Then my stomach
aches. I want to trickle my own blood on the plate
of my parent’s marriage, and on my own.
5.
I’m no longer in the middle about anything, argue
in-between courses, and don’t notice when I lean forward
to grab a bowl of charoset—don’t notice when the candles
catch my hair—and the burning, and the soot.
No, we won’t squirrel around politics.
Finally, others are laughing and it doesn’t matter
over what.
We sing.
We sing.
People Speak Yiddish in Bars All Over Berlin
after the article: “You can now hear people speaking Yiddish in bars all over Berlin” Rosamond van Wingerden February 18, 2024 The Forward
There’s a break in the skirt panel of a woman who elbows
an oak table, beer on her shoes. She says geruder,
when words stop then continue. Only I don’t speak
Yiddish so would miss the mishpatim,
argument between two men settled with compromise.
I wonder about my great-grandfather who thrust
hands into a herring barrel to buy enough for shabbat,
and my grandparents who suitcased from Poland,
ship’s hull assaulted with water until the water
spoke Yiddish, wrestling away from town
whippings and burnings, and soldiers’ keep away.
On arrival, their New York apartment spoke what sounded
like German but was not German—each sentence,
yes, each one, ended with a verb as if complete.
Today, people speak Yiddish all over Berlin, words
not written in books of a lost civilization or captured
in photos taken days before the glass broke—
some of the words stutter in stiff conversation,
meaning rapid hoof beats. Some are the same arc
my grandmother pointed to forming in the sky the morning
they left home, boarded the ship, remaining moon
lit by a new sun. Her father said, stroking his beard,
Already compromise is written
into the curve of the sea’s open throat.
Elegy to the War
In response to Wendell Berry’s “Peace of Wild Things”
I come to the day in grief
over what’s lost, a blind day
where our porch is soaked.
Yet it’s so much more,
about crimson trees half lit,
and behind, more trunks, thinner
as if they have drunk too much
or not enough, trying all the bars in town
on a bender. Rain tumbles
over gutters like a broken dam,
and I think of the war,
what’s just and unjust.
Sweet sparrow song—an idealist perhaps—
pierces through as if she can quarter
and hang the thing, as if she can stop
even the missiles or the lies
about body count. Or reverse time
so young women
tied to trees in an orchard were not, after all,
mutilated.
Maybe the flooding here,
how water pools, at risk of
surging over the door jam,
maybe this abundance
accounts for what’s been taken.
I ask no one to clear the leaves
because there is no one to repair the holes.
_________
Laurel Benjamin is a Cider Press Review Book Award finalist. She is active with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon, curates Ekphrastic Writers, and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Current and upcoming publication: Pirene’s Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Gone Lawn, Nixes Mate. Pushcart Prize nominee, Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. She invented a secret language with her brother. When not writing Laurel enjoys using the convection feature on her oven to bake Irish soda bread scones or fennel golden raison scones, along with gardening and walking the hills of her town.
Wonderful poems Laurel. Great opening on the first.