adminLemon 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 of yellow dangling off branches
like heavy, milky breasts oozing summer
citrus, warm in California sunshine, filling
a small rectangular space of dirt behind
their trellised patio where we sit each fall, though
it’s hot as Egyptian summers. We gather
for the harvest holiday beneath palm leaves and
beds of bamboo on which hang stained
glass lanterns, casting rainbow shadows across
our paper plates soggy with the color of her
cooking; hearty fassoulada soup, heaps of
creamy skordalia, spicy schug, moussaka layered
and runny, slow-cooked Palestinian eggplant.
One day, this ethnic food will make me brave.
I will ask an elderly woman, her hair wrapped
in a scarf digging a large spoon into a thick
crusted dough, scooping heaps of a home-cooked
dish wrapped in a bath towel onto the waiting
plates of relatives and friends who speak a language
I do not. Belish, she will tell me. Later, my
mother and I will study the recipe, learn about
the Republic of Tatarstan. I will think of my own
grandmother wrapped in head coverings,
her accent and the foods brought from
countries far away, the way fat kneidlach floating
in a pot can be enough to make one homesick.
Hayil
At the cry of dawn,
they descended—
like meat-eating birds of prey.
They hunted to pick
the flesh off your bones.
sabaya
They dragged you by the cuffs
of your stained cartooned pants
into the gut of the earth,
the dark acidic churning belly
of desert land beneath homes
of the children they hide
behind and beneath.
sabaya
This is where they keep you.
In tunnels that swallow sunlight
whole the way they swallow girls
whole broken girls while the world
cloaks itself in black and white,
forgets you during their outrage.
All the while the tunnel men chant
sabaya
But we,
the sisters
the mothers
the daughters
of Israel,
we do not forget you.
We do not call you
sabaya
we call you
Naama.
We call you
Karina.
We call you
Daniela.
We call you
Agam.
We call you
Liri.
We call you home.
_______
Talya Jankovits’ work has been featured in numerous magazines. Her fiction and poetry have received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, Best of the Net nominations, and an Editor’s Choice award. Her poetry collection, girl woman wife mother, is published by Kelsay Books. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters. To read more of her work you can visit her at www.talyajankovits.com, or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @talyajankovits.
Love “Hayil.” Esp. the dark acidic churning belly and the tunnels that swallow whole broken girls. Brava.
Love “Hayil.” Esp. the dark acidic churning belly and the tunnels that swallow whole broken girls. Brava.