Category Archives: poetry

October 6, 2014 · 7:30 am

The Encounter

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

In the middle of Times Square, he approached me,
a bit hesitatingly, looking more like
a tourist than a native New Yorker.
I thought he was going to ask for directions.
“Are you Jewish?” he said.
Do I look Jewish?
I paused, then nodded.
What did he want? Money?
“Let me tell you something,” he said.
I looked away, anxious to get rid of him.
Did I need to hear his philosophy? Who was he?
“Let me tell you my impressions of New York.”
I don’t have time for this.
“I’m from Tel Aviv and the two cities are quite …..”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but my wife is waiting and….”
“But, only a minute; let me tell ….….”
I gathered my wife nearby and we walked away.
“You should have listened to him,” she said,
at least for a while. He was just lonely.”
She was right. I looked back, but the man was gone.
I had missed everything, tone, intent, need to talk,
and had squandered a chance to ease the pain of loneliness
of a stranger in the city, my city.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and 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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August 25, 2014 · 7:48 am

Worms in the Flour

by Jacqueline Jules (Arlington, VA)

The sweet smell of baking bread
widened your nostrils, then your eyes.
“A girl who bakes bread!” Your face,
a nomad finding water in the desert.
It was the seventies.
Men were afraid to open doors, afraid not to.
You were ten years my senior.
“Challah,” I corrected. “Sabbath bread.
An expression of faith.”

When time allows and mood demands,
I still set out bowls and measuring cups,
yeast, eggs, and flour on the kitchen counter,
determined to knead a sticky white mess
into something smooth and solid.
It’s a noisy process. The first time
you heard the sound
of something being punched and beaten,
you ran to the kitchen to watch.

It requires more strength now,
in the house alone.
Finding the cabinet empty of yeast,
I can’t ask you to put down the newspaper
and run to the store. I almost quit today—
opening the flour tin, finding worms.

But there were empty bowls
on the counter, waiting
beside sugar, yeast, and eggs.
They taunted me, dared me to continue.
I grabbed my coat and keys.

Not long after, I came back
with new flour, ready
to start over.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of many Jewish children’s books including The Hardest Word, Once Upon a Shabbos, Sarah Laughs, Miriam in the Desert, and Goodnight Sh’ma. Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com

“Worms in the Flour” appears in Stronger Than Cleopatra, a collection of poems about going forward in the face of loss. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author. For more more about the book, visit: 

http://www.booknook-eljpublications.com/store/p4/Stronger_Than_Cleopatra.html

 

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August 11, 2014 · 9:05 am

A Question I Had Never Heard

Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

My friend, a city worker,
college-educated, asked me over dinner,
“Was the Holocaust partially propaganda?”
“You serious?” I said, shocked.
“I am. I can’t believe all of that happened.”
“All of that did happen – and more.”
I felt hurt by his ignorance.
How could I not be appalled?
It will not fracture the friendship,
but it will cause it serious injury.
“Did you read ‘Night’?” I asked.
“What’s that”?
“A book about the Holocaust, non-fiction.”
“No.”
“I will get it for you.”
We left the diner; I was still upset.
My teacher response: I gave him homework?
What an inadequate reply.
I should have said and done a lot more,
but what?

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and 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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July 28, 2014 · 3:24 pm

Inheritance

by Bonnie Widerman (Irvine, CA)

There is a hole in the fabric of my Jewish childhood,
something missing, gone, nowhere to be found,
though I’ve searched my childhood home high and low—
Not for a beautifully crafted Tallit left behind.
I was never given one—no girl was in those days.
Not for a handmade Challah cover,
embellished with my awkward scrawling and designs.
Surely that fell apart years ago.
Not for my mother’s Shabbat tablecloth,
white patterned fabric with a neatly scalloped edge.
All her tablecloths lie exactly where she kept them
when she was alive.
No. The treasure I inherited and lost all at once
was the very fabric of my mother’s Jewish life,
embodied in her Shabbat candlesticks—
A wisp of white smoke threading through the air
from an extinguished match.
A blessing in two voices, intertwined.
Two dancing flames casting shadows on the wall,
knitting our family together in Sabbath peace.
After my mother passed away, her candlesticks vanished
as if they were that matchstick smoke.
When I stand in her kitchen and look up at the shelf
where those pillars of blue-green enamel and brass once stood,
I feel the weight of their absence—and hers—in my heart.
I cannot bring back what is gone.
But the pattern of lighting candles with my mother
week after week, year after year,
is woven into the fabric of my life.
It unfolds into blessing every Friday night
as I light Shabbat candles at my own family’s table
with my daughters by my side.

Bonnie Widerman is the Director of Marketing & Communications for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, a national non-profit organization. She has been a professional writer and corporate communicator for more than 20 years. In her free time, she writes stories and poetry and her work has appeared in Ladybug magazine and Fandangle. Bonnie is currently editing a manuscript entitled, Her Kaddish: A Jewish Woman’s Journey through Mourning, which she wrote during the year she spent saying Kaddish for her mother, and which she hopes to share with others facing a loss.

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June 9, 2014 · 6:40 am

More Funerals Than Weddings

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Not a close friend by any means,
he bravely fought cancer, and lost.
No other friend went to his services,
but lest you think me heroic,
know I was, perhaps, just ghoulishly curious
as to Final Words solemnly spoken.
What would be the column addition
totaled up by the well-meaning rabbi?
When the eulogies are read,
would they provide a clue to my own?
Am I just playing Mark Twain
attending my own funeral,
or am I making serious preparation
to understand the finality of things?
Does the last ledger indicate a zero balance,
marked in neither red or black?
You go out as you came in – with nothing;
a shroud has no pockets, you know.
So, why am I not making more of my time
at the fair before the big tent is taken down forever?

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and 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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April 21, 2014 · 7:00 am

Mayyim Hayyim (A Triptych)

by Arlyn Miller (Glencoe, IL)

Gathering the Waters
Approach the water.
Bring who you are
and what you have lost.

In its transparency
the water holds
every color.

Like light – every color contained;
though we cannot see this,
for seeing through it.

Enter the living water
which carries where it came from
and the mystery of its destination.

Immerse your self
and emerge with the whole
of who you are

which contains who you have been
and who you will be, though it may be
as invisible as light.

Immersion
As if you didn’t have a body,
were all thought and feeling.
As if the clumsy feet, the aging hands,
the blemished skin and unwieldy hair
were not you. Most of the time
you can move about in this way,
and name yourself
what’s housed inside, incorporeal.

The water will disabuse you.
Temperature and displacement
a stark mirror: you are finite and imperfect,
separate from what is not you,
no matter how connected,
connected, no matter how separate.

The waters have parted
to make room for you
and gathered you in.

Neither have they drowned you
nor have you made of them a flood;
you’re not that powerful – only human
holy human.

Mikveh Prayer
Begin
again.
This time in benevolence
without violence or betrayal.
This time without someone else’s story
dragging you under, drowning
you breathless with terror.

This beginning
begins with you.
Take the love you have been given,
that which you have seen
and that to which you have been blind,
and sew it together to make a whole
cloth of shelter and fertile comfort.

Begin
again.
Pick a name for yourself,
the name by which you want to be known,
the name by which you want to know yourself.

A poet, essayist and journalist, Arlyn Miller was inspired to write these three poems while attending an international conference at Mayyim Hayyim, a progressive, inclusive, egalitarian mikveh and learning center for Jewish spirituality near Boston, MA. Of the three poems, “Gathering the Waters” (which was also the title of the conference), appeared in the Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Volume 9, 2013, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

Arlyn is the founding editor of Poetic License Press, which publishes creative writing that is “authentic, accessible and engaging,” including the poetry anthologies, A Light Breakfast: Poems to Start Your Day and A Midnight Snack: Poems for Late Night Reading. Arlyn teaches writing workshops in the Chicago area.  Her poems, essays, and articles have been widely published. 

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March 17, 2014 · 9:01 am

The Circle of Life

 by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

Yiddish births my mama’s mother tongue
Yiddish silences my mama at death
Yiddish curls around the circle of life
Yiddish comes up from beneath the dirt
Yiddish spits, curses, and insults
Yiddish grabs like my bubbe’s cheek pinch
It is the language I cannot speak.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in or are forthcoming in Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Poetica Magazine, Jewishfiction.net, Nimrod, Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Minerva Rising, The Copperfield Review and others. She teaches creative writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey. She is the author of Discovering Your Jewish Ancestors (Heritage Quest, 2001) and the forthcoming Goldie Takes a Stand! (Kar-Ben, Fall 2014), a tale of young Golda Meir. You can read more about her at her website www.barbarakrasner.com and blog The Whole Megillah – The Writer’s Resource for Jewish Story.

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March 10, 2014 · 8:53 am

Mechitza: The Partition

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Some call me a wall of division;
some call me a wall of unity.
It depends on your point of view,
literally, from where you sit.
But I have no use for labels,
no use for whether you dress me
in wood, cloth, or glass,
no use for whether you decorate me
in rich curlicue and seraphim,
for I have stood proudly for many a millennium,
holding together the traditions of the Jewish people.
I help keep worshipers focused,
with no distractions, on the eyes of God.
Now, here in the 21st century,
people have begun to question my role –
whether it is right or not to separate the sexes.
Let the two people below debate this question.
Let each give his and her reasons.
I take no sides.
I only answer to God.

***

Now don’t get me wrong –
I love all women, any size or shape.
I can’t tell you how many times
I dream of them, day and night.
I’m a man, what do you think.
But when it comes between me and God,
I don’t want to have visions of
silky bodies in my head, distracting me.
I mean how right would that be?
When you’re praying, nothing else
can get in the way, know what I mean?
It would not be proper to think of
bright lips, smooth thighs, big breasts.
I mean I just can’t turn these thoughts on and off.
You think I’m a sex maniac obsessing about women?
Oh, no, not when I’m conversing with God.
I just need a bit of help; the wall needn’t be too high.

***

We deserve to be up in the balcony,
or at the least separated by
wood, cloth, glass, whatever.
Having to pray with the men
would be too much a disturbance for them.
God knows, they wouldn’t be able
to keep their thoughts on their prayers.
Worshiping with us is preposterous, I know,
and flies in the face of Orthodox tradition.
They have every right to exclude us
from leading them in service.
We are meant to be not seen, not heard,
and the further we are away,
the less seen and heard we will be.
So I propose we sit in a different building altogether.
Only the men deserve to be physically closer to God.
Obviously, we continue to be unworthy,
only valuable enough to stay home with the children
and to be happy to serve our husbands dinner
when they come home tired after a long day at the temple.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and 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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February 3, 2014 · 7:30 am

Haftorah

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

One syllable at a time
with correct cantillation.
That’s how I learn
the portion of the Torah
I will read on my
bar mitzvah day.

Again and again
I recite one
maybe two
syllables
until
the cantor
decides
the melody
embeds
itself
into my small brain.

I’m sorry to say
I never learned
the meaning of
the sacred words
I so carefully sang.

Richard Epstein lives in the Washington DC area and is active in the Warrior Poets sponsored by Walter Reed Medical Center, the Veterans Writing Project and he hosts an open mic venue for veterans and friends of veterans on the National Mall 

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December 23, 2013 · 2:42 pm

Christmas Eve

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

I wore socks on my hands as I played
kick-the-can in the middle of the cobblestone court.
The neighborhood kids asked me to sneak
some of my mom’s potato kugel and mandle bread.
They promised to trade pierogies and kielbasa
the next time we play.

No one asked about the flickering candles
in the front window of our house.
No one asked why we didn’t have
a Christmas tree. That night, I sat
on the parlor floor in front of the tall
Philco radio, while mom darned socks
and dad fell asleep with the newspaper
held high in his hands.

I listened to Buffalo Bob to see if Santa
received my letter. I asked for a Red Flier
and Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring.
Grandma stopped rocking and looked up
from her knitting when she heard Buffalo Bob
announce my name on the radio.
“Vas es daas?”  she asked.

We listened to the Lone Ranger, Jack Benny,
the Shadow and the Creaking Door.
After every one was asleep I tip-toed
down the creaky stairs and left a glass
of milk and cookies on top of the radio.

I shut my eyes tight and made a wish
for Santa to bring me a something other
than a wooden dreidel, a cap and bag of socks
from my Aunt, Chanukah gelt
and a shiny lump of coal.

Richard Epstein lives in the Washington DC area and is active in the Warrior Poets sponsored by Walter Reed Medical Center, the Veterans Writing Project and he hosts an open mic venue for veterans and friends of veterans on the National Mall in Washington, DC every Veterans Day and Memorial Day.

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