by Anne Myles (Greensboro, NC)
At the Seder at my aunt’s house in New Jersey,
as my uncle-by-marriage blessed the matzo,
intoning hamotzi lechem min haaretz,
my mother and her four sisters and brothers
would chime in not amen but Minnie Horowitz!
Cousin Dan told me that story on the phone—
at sixty I’ve learned the blessing, get the joke.
They’re all gone now, but alive again in this—
that fierce irreverence and joy in their own wit.
Once I was there too, gripping the Haggadah,
my insides roiling with obscure hungers,
salty greens and charoset on my tongue.
What was I to make of it, that tale of plagues
and miracles, my inscrutable inheritance,
crumbled between jibes and family backtalk?
No one thought it worthwhile to explain.
How much did they grasp of it themselves,
children of Ray, the crown rabbi’s daughter,
transported from Kotelnich to Jersey City,
who when my mother’s friend showed up at dinner
hissed in the kitchen, Tell her it’s veal!
Oh America, what a marvel you seemed then—
land of freedom from law and memory both,
where we gloried in our big brains and mouths,
fanning history away like cooking smoke.
Oh Epsteins, I am formed of you, but wander
lonesome through states you never dreamt of
in a changed century. Oh Minnie, I imagine
you dancing toward me like some long-lost ancestor
in your best dress, your pale knees plump as loaves,
your candles burning, and your small hands raised,
circling the light before covering your eyes.
Anne Myles is the author of Late Epistle, winner of Sappho’s Prize in Poetry (Headmistress Press, 2023), and What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer (Final Thursday Press, 2022) Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and been nominated for multiple Pushcarts. Anne is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa and holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She now lives in Greensboro, where she co-hosts the new reading series Poetry on Tap and is belatedly exploring the religious dimensions of her Jewish identity at Temple Emanuel. If you’d like to learn more about Anne, visit her website: annemyles.com
The Jewish Writing Project 