Category Archives: poetry

December 26, 2022 · 6:30 am

Peel Away to Dust

—a pantoum after Psalm 103, verses 6-16

by Donna Spruijt-Metz (Los Angeles, CA)

Tonight—buoyed 

by making order—and rituals

of passing 

and there’s the fear of it.

By making order I am lifted—rites

of YOUR presence—

the fear of it—

the haunting stop

of YOUR presence

gentling me. Time—and yet

the haunting—stop—

I am blindfolded by my hands

as YOU gentle me—time—

the moving into—yet

my hands

along the walls of YOUR compassion

are absolute—yet 

the ghost persists, spirits me

along the walls of YOUR compassion—

fumbling YOUR fabled kindness.

I touch it, hungry

spirits peel—fragile—

as I fumble in YOUR kindness

YOU lift humiliation, my concerns—

peels me fragile,

frightened desertion. 

Unlock concerns

and dust feels pain.

I remember every desertion, 

going to dust

I am dust and dust feels pain

as I fertilize YOUR fields.

I, willful, mourn going to dust.

Wind passes through us all—moves us on.

I bless, fertilize YOUR fields

tonight, light, buoyed.

A few words from the author on the poem “Peel Away to Dust“–
For years, on most Thursday nights I have gathered with a group of friends to study psalms using a process called ‘Lectio Divina,’ borrowed (and morphed) from the traditional Christian monastic practice. Often these musings lead to poems. The repetition in the pantoum form helped me to express my halting approach towards the holy.

Donna Spruijt-Metz is a poet, a psychology professor, and a recent MacDowell Fellow. Her first career was as a classical flutist. She lived in the Netherlands for 22 years and translates Dutch poetry to English. Her poetry and translations appear in Copper Nickel, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, the Tahoma Literary Review, the Inflectionist Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbooks are ‘Slippery Surfaces’ (Finishing Line Press) and ‘And Haunt the World’ (a collaboration with Flower Conroy, Ghost City Press). Camille Dungy (Orion Magazine) chose her forthcoming full length ‘General Release from the Beginning of the World’ (January 2023, Free Verse Editions) as one of the 14 Recommended Poetry Collections for Winter 2022. She gets restless. Her website is https://www.donnasmetz.com/

And here’s a link to Donna’s debut collection, which will be released on January 1, 2023: https://www.amazon.com/General-Release-Beginning-World-Spruijt-Metz/dp/1643173510

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December 22, 2022 · 10:00 am

Chanukah Metaphor

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Nun.

Gimel.

Hey.

Shin.

The four faces of the dreidel,

a game learned in childhood,

a metaphor for adults.

Take all, lose everything

put in two, take half.

Fate turns on a spin, 

fortunes flip on a dime, 

a fifty-fifty chance for the dime, 

a one-in-four shot for the dreidel. 

Thus, the questions I’ve wrestled with

ever since childhood:

is it luck, circumstance, or fate,

or are we all part of God’s plan?

Does He spin the dreidel for us?

Does He decide which side turns up?

Or are we subject to twirling all our lives 

and watching where we land?

Nun.

Gimel.

Hey.

Shin. 

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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November 7, 2022 · 6:30 am

It Could Have Been Me

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

It could have been me

     A survivor tells how lice
     attacked her body daily
     A man waits for an exit visa
     in Berlin, 3 days, he still waits
     The ship St. Louis is turned back
     900 refugees are barred from the U.S.

It could have been me

     A family goes into hiding in Amsterdam
     They will soon be discovered
     A prisoner, shriveled and starving,
     throws himself against an electric fence
     A baby is shot in the head because
     he was crying in his mother’s arms

It could have been me

     He is forced out of school in Vienna,
     taunted now by former classmates
     Starved in the cold in Poland,
     he will do anything for a morsel of bread
     They are marched to the showers in Auschwitz,
     where are you, my God?

It could have been me… all of them could have been me

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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October 31, 2022 · 6:30 am

Conversion of the Jew?

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

“The usual, Mel?”
says Delora, the sweet-smiling 
server at the new Mennonite-run coffee shop.
“I’m thinking,” I say.
“How is God treating you today?”
she asks playfully, but with
a hint of missionary zeal.
“OK, I guess, hadn’t thought about it.”
Last week I accepted a tract
from her on the life of Jesus.
“What did you think? Interesting, no?”
“I’m still digesting it,” I say.
Sweet Delora, I think,
I’ll finish your book,
discuss its merits,
but don’t expect me
to switch religions.
I may be a “bad” Jew, derelict
in his religious and cultural duties,
but I am still a Jew.
You are certainly entitled to follow
whomever you want, but
do not count me in your fold.
I may not follow a strict Jewish path,
but I’m not about to deviate off it.
“I see you have chicken noodle soup
on the menu. I’ll have that to celebrate
who I am,” I say proudly.
“Good choice,” Delora says.

Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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October 3, 2022 · 6:30 am

The Blue Mikvah

by Edna Shochat (Boise, ID)

To each his Temple.

My house of worship was established years ago

for young men, Christian.

Today YMCA is simply “The Y”.

Why? Because now everyone is welcome

regardless of age, gender, or faith.

Neither young nor male,

Jewish by birth and atheist by choice,

I attend, religiously, a daily ritual in the pool.

Like joining a Minyan

gathering for morning prayer at the Shul. 

I dip into the blue mikvah

and under watchful eyes of young lifeguards

swim like a gray-haired mermaid

counting my blessings.

Edna Shochat was born in British Mandate Palestine and grew up in Israel, leaving for the United States to follow career opportunities. Four years ago she and her husband followed their grandkids to Idaho. She discovered poetry at a Writing Through Cancer program while undergoing chemotherapy in 2011, and joined the YMCA to help her recovery. She continues to write poetry “to help carry her on the journey we all share, of aging.“

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September 19, 2022 · 6:30 am

Bubbe and Zayde Take Me to the Ice Capades

by Judith Sanders (Pittsburgh, PA)

On their Bronx subway platform,

they hold my hands.

She with her hatpin and cloth coat.  

He in a button-down and tie clip, 

worn for this holiday 

from cashiering at a newsstand.

We wait for the train to Manhattan,

where they never go, except today, 

for me, their scrubbed, chubby grandchild, 

who can’t speak their language

and has her own room.  

She was never yanked from school. 

Would never know, God willing, 

the soldiers, the nightmare of ripping 

and smashing, the mother’s screams.  

My parents don’t care about the Ice Capades, 

the ladies in sequins, twirled by men in tights. 

They are going to the symphony.  

Bubbe and Zayde guard me, one on each side, 

from the clatter of the oncoming train.

They do not ask why I want to go 

to the Ice Capades, when my whole life 

is one glide down smooth ice, an escapade, 

a frolic.

Judith Sanders’ poetry collection In Deep was recently published by Kelsay Books.  Her work appears in numerous journals, including Pleiades, The American Scholar, Modern Language Studies, Der Pakn Treger, and Poetica, and on the websites Vox Populi and Full Grown People.  She lives with her family in Pittsburgh.

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August 22, 2022 · 6:30 am

Afternoon at the Holocaust Museum (from a dream)

by Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

There you were Mom and Pop,
middle-aged, well-dressed,
on a bustling afternoon
in the Holocaust Museum.
So odd, since I’ve rarely seen you
appearing so alive
since you’ve both died.

I was so enchanted seeing you again,
I barely thought of context at first,
you both docents on display at this exhibit.
I think you were excited to see me
although you were quite preoccupied
showing spectators around
the Jewish apartment in Berlin containing
the average artifacts that fill all our lives,
except these rooms were turned to rubble,
up-ended couches, dishes smashed,
curtains slashed, lives ripped apart
at the seams, by black-booted beasts
on a sunny April afternoon in 1939.

You both smiled seraphic
at the rapt crowd,
radiant as angels,
which maybe you were,
as if, finally, you both were detached
enough from the horror,
even as memories
encroached on all sides.

Maybe you’ve embraced all the relatives,
friends, whose lives were leveled
years ago at vicious hands of Nazi brutes.
Has that holy reunion given you a type
of peace to be able to tour
through the past without shattering
into shreds?

Or perhaps God in His inimitable wisdom
sat down with you both on His white mantel of clouds,
patiently gave you His explanation for His silence,
willingness to wait out the Atrocity
while sitting on His hands.

Perhaps that explanation is enough,
if only in the afterlife.                                                            

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.

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August 8, 2022 · 6:30 am

Erratics

by Anne Myles (Greensboro, NC)

—Spirit Mound Historic Prairie, October 27, 2018

In 1804, Lewis and Clark trudged sweltering

up Paha Wakan, supposed by all to be a place of Deavels—

but found just birds and insects, herds of buffalo below.

As I approach it now—singular upheaval

on an island of east Dakota prairie—

I check my phone by habit, read the news:

eleven Jews just massacred in Pittsburgh. 

On the trail to the summit I see a boulder

of tombstone-gray granite.

A sign explains it as a glacial erratic:

a rock unlike those native to the region,

carried by the force of moving ice,

scoured and thrust for hundreds of miles perhaps.

Erratic from errare, to wander.

It reminds me of the long migrations of my people—

what drove us to places we could not imagine,

to places we believed we knew.

And I ponder this life in which I left New York 

to end up a dweller in the strange Midwest,

imagining the word my grandfather called my mother,

Yevreika—Jew-girl—rolling across the generations.

My country lies spread before me.

From the top we beheld a most butifull landscape—

which I gaze on to the horizon, wondering

how much blood has watered the fields I see

to feed the prairie grasses that rustle now

as a pheasant startles up within them

and rockets sideways into sun and wind.

Anne Myles’s work has appeared in On the Seawall, North American Review, Split Rock Review, Whale Road Review, Lavender Review, and other journals. A recent transplant from Iowa to Greensboro, NC, she is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa, and received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and was co-winner of the 2022 ellipsis… Award, judged by Carolyn Forché.

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June 27, 2022 · 6:30 am

The Ladies of the Monday Night Club

by Madlynn Haber (Northampton, MA)

When the Ladies of the Monday Night Club

met in our living room, I helped my grandmother

put chocolate candies out in crystal dishes.

I sat on the floor by the swinging door

watching the ladies who smelled like flowers.

They took their seats around the room

talking in loud accented voices.

Some were called by their last names,

no Miss or Mrs., they were just

Homnick, Goldman, and Levine.

Some called by their Yiddish names,

Manya and Malka, and some by their modern

American names like my grandmother, Ruth.

Their laughter and chatting was hushed

by a leader when the meeting’s rituals began.

The one I most remember was the collection

of money for Tzedakah, for charitable causes.

Each woman in turn rose, walked to a basket

making her donation, her addition to the kitty

in the name of an honor or blessing in her life.

A grandchild’s graduation. A daughter’s pregnancy.

A husband’s promotion. I listened to discover

if my latest report card would earn me a mention

when my grandmother took her turn.

After the sharing, there was a card game

and home-baked apple cake and coffee

The Monday Night Club Ladies, always on hand

for celebrations, came out in full force

for my grandmother’s seventieth birthday.

There were less at her eightieth and only a few

when she turned ninety. By then, the meetings

had been moved to Monday afternoons

and I had grown-up and moved away.

I hold cherished memories of sounds, smells,

and stories, I recall from my spot on the floor

when the Ladies of the Monday Night Club met.

I inherited my grandmother’s membership pin,

a fondness for women’s groups, her recipe

for apple cake, and a commitment to making

donations when good fortune comes my way.

____

Madlynn Haber lives with her dog, Ozzie, in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been published in the anthologyAdult Children (Wishing Up Press, 2021), Buddhist Poetry Review, Dissonance Magazine, K’in Literary Journal, Hevria, The Jewish Writing Project, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetica Magazine and other journals. Visit her online at www.madlynnwrites.com

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June 13, 2022 · 6:30 am

friday night

by Rick Black (Arlington, VA)

june 17, 1977

i hear

my mother’s

last breaths

28 years 

later

in my daughter’s 

first laughter

time melts

like a Dali clock

and piles up

like dripping 

Sabbath candles

inside

Rick Black is an award-winning book artist and poet who runs Turtle Light Press, a small press dedicated to poetry, handmade books and fine art prints. His poetry collection, Star of David, won an award for contemporary Jewish writing and was named one of the best poetry books in 2013. His haiku collection, Peace and War: A Collection of Haiku from Israel, has been called “a prayer for peace.” Other poems and translations have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Midstream, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Frogpond, Cricket, RawNervz, Blithe Spirit, Still, and other journals. 

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