Category Archives: poetry

February 18, 2013 · 7:35 am

Crosses on the Wall

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

My father sent me to Hebrew school,
where mournful prayers kept me a prisoner,
preventing me from playing first base
for my beloved Little League team.
On the High Holidays, I dreaded wearing
my wool suit which made me scratch.
I looked all around the synagogue, bored,
counting the number of lights on the memorial wall.
I kept sneaking looks at how many pages remained.
Liberated at 13, I ran free, but was slowed by guilt.
Years later, I am a speaker of literature
at a conference at a small Catholic college.
Two nuns sit in on my workshop,
and on the wall floats a giant cross.
“So boychik, my ancestors seem to be saying.
“How are you feeling these days?
See how your lack of Jewish education has cost you?
Are you now playing first base for the other side?”

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 a new 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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December 17, 2012 · 9:17 am

The Broken Country

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

No poem expresses enough;
no word heals enough.
We are the broken country.
We have been felled by madness,
swamped by guns, abandoned by God
who seems to have attended business elsewhere.
We are the broken country.
Reason provides answers after the fact.
Faith provides comfort after the fact.
People will gather in churches and synagogues
in a fruitless attempt to make sense
out of what is senseless.
Psychologists will offer theories.
Clergy will offer solace.
Politicians will offer legislation –
all too late.
You can’t close the gate
after the horror has been released.
We are the broken country.

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 a new 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 26, 2012 · 9:15 am

Loss of Grace

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

The perfect metaphor, you think?
The missing word in my crossword puzzle,
G-R-A-C-E,
a word I couldn’t get,
a quality I don’t have.
How many other words
have I missed in my life?
L-O-V-E?
C-O-M-P-A-S-S-I-O-N?
P-U-R-P-O-S-E?
Apparently, I don’t understand the clues,
and my penciled answers
are constantly erased in self-doubt.
Understanding the overall theme of this puzzle,
lies outside my up and down comprehension.
I would like to receive the full measure of Your grace
to finish this rather incomplete puzzle
with a bold pen stroke of assurance.

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 a new 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 5, 2012 · 8:38 am

Chance

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

In Atlantic City,
wind and water claw at the boardwalk,
quickly reducing it to kindling.
Chance, like a coin slipping into a slot machine,
registers winners and losers on a neon screen,
complete with ringing bells and bright lights.
Late-leaving patrons before the evac orders
hurry to try their luck at various games of chance.
Blackjack, roulette, slots, wheels of fortune promote
both the odds and rewards of landing
on the right side of the table, or
race the dealer to twenty-one, but outside
the howling wind offers a bigger crap shoot
with the jackpot winnings of your life.
Storm shifts a few degrees north: survival.
Storm not shifting a few degrees south:
your house in ruins, your cars destroyed.
God’s plan not understood as
His throw of the cosmic dice rolls
as unpredictably as your next flip of the cards.
Who by fire, who by water?
Or both.

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 a new 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 8, 2012 · 7:38 am

Why Fast?

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Good question for a self-doubting Jew.
Me, who counts the number of pages left in the service,
me, who counts the numbers of lights above the ark,
me, who now gets up and sits down more slowly.
What is my one day fasting
compared to a Muslim’s thirty,
a dieter’s holy grail,
a third world child’s daily necessity?
Does my fast count for extra credit
when the signed and sealed decision is made?
I fast for reasons that hover
just outside the borders of precise definition.
I fast for reasons that have little to do
with the poor education forced on me.
I fast for reasons that mark my tenuous connection
to a congregation of people I know once a year,
to a congregation of six million I never knew.
Finally, I fast to ask forgiveness for sins,
real and imagined, deliberate and accidental.
And while that hefty number is being tallied,
I try to convince myself  that fasting
will let me hear the voice of God,
establishing a one-to-one connection I need to make.

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 a new 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 1, 2012 · 6:00 am

Turn, Turn, Turn

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

I’d like to ask Pete Seeger to supper in my sukkah.
He’s 92 now, and who knows how many more?
I’d serve vegetable stew on brown rice
and a seedy home-risen bread
and after a local, seasonal pie
I’d turn to him, and tell him
how I grew up, and then out, on his music,
how The Weavers were my family’s soundtrack,
how my parents didn’t care about the politics
but just liked the songs, and sang along
— and our family didn’t sing much —
especially my father, in a buffalo-plaid shirt,
at an Adirondacks bungalow,
on the steps to a screened-in porch,
holding up the trout he’d caught on Schroon River
like a Torah just taken from the Ark.

After I’d served tea, and offered sweaters against the autumn night,
I’d turn to Pete, and tell him
how his songs, and the banjo,
and that beckoning voice of his youth
are the best sounds of my innocent soul,
the part that’s pure, that’s remained unmarred;
that his songs blessed me with things to believe in,
and how, to this day, I’m not only willing,
but I’m desperate for him to raise a hand between strums,
and point to me, to us, urging us to sing together, to sing along,
to sing for God-knows-what something.

The sukkah rustles in the wind, leaves crackle,
weary season’s-end mosquitos make a half-hearted appearance.
I wrap my father’s buffalo-plaid shirt around me;
I wear some of his clothes now that he’s gone.

Pete would turn to me, chuck me under the chin,
and sit up higher in his brittle, reedy body.
He’d hold up his hand as if to part waters
and point
and every person sitting in any sukkah
anywhere in the world at that moment
would start singing that song from Ecclesiastes,
The one about time for this, and time for that,
and the four-part harmony would rise out of the sukkahs
towards heaven, if there is one,
like sweet, good-hearted smoke.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes — including journaling and creative expression — at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania. She leads a non-fiction writing group and works with individual students, and is continuing to write Jewish-themed readings for what she hopes will become a book, In the Spirit of the Holidays.

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September 24, 2012 · 8:24 am

Silent Meditation

by Natalie Zellat Dyen (Huntington Valley, PA)

The earth spins
Through hours and days and seasons
To a time of stillness
When the shofar sounds
And we reflect on the dark nights
Of angry words and stricken souls
Of broken bodies and broken promises
Of empty spaces left by those who are no more
And we reflect on the bright days
Of birth and breath
Of music and miracles
Of kind acts and loving arms
And the gravity that keeps us firmly grounded
As the earth spins.

So we reflect
And repent
And look ahead
And promise to do better
And give more
And love more
As the shofar sounds
And we turn to face the new year
And the earth spins
And we go round again.

Natalie Zellat Dyen is a freelance writer and photographer living in Huntingdon Valley, PA. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, The Willow Review, Global Woman Magazine, Intercom Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other newspapers and journals. Links to Natalie’s published work are available atwww.nataliewrites.com.

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September 10, 2012 · 8:01 am

Me, George Herbert, and the High Holidays

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

What do I, little Jewish boy from Brooklyn,
have in common with George Herbert,
17th century metaphysical poet and priest?
A lot more than you might think,
he in italics, me in Times New Roman.
I Struck the board and cry’d, No more.
How many times have I abandoned
the temple, the service, and my God?
But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde
at every word….
How many times have I rebelled
at droning words, incomprehensible to my ears?
…Me thoughts I heard one calling, ‘Childe.’
And I reply’d, ‘My Lord.’
And so, when the shofar sounds this year,
for reasons I can’t fully explain,
I will be sitting in my usual seat, Row U, Seat 4,
saying “God, I am here,” despite, or maybe
because of, all questions and doubts,
looking to find the exquisite moments of
wonderment and epiphany
I suspect are there.

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 a new 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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September 3, 2012 · 10:18 am

Why I’m Not Doing Tashlikh This Year

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

I’m mad at you, God,
You tricked me into thinking life is fair
And that if I did good things,
God things,
I’d get what I deserved
(which wasn’t so extraordinary, after all,
just the basic stuff like everyone else).
But you screwed me, God,
Holding back from me, then snatching away when I thought it was mine.
And now you expect me to take the crumbs from my pocket and toss them,
my misdeeds and regrets,
into flowing waters?  I won’t.
I don’t have what to give.
Loss after loss has diminished me
And I’m tired and small;
I need to hang on to what little I have.
Of course I’ve made mistakes –
But it’s your turn, God, this year,
To atone
And admit
And commit to making better.
You owe me, God, big time.

Yes, I’m angry.
I should have gone swimming today
Rather than to shul
Where I feel your big daddy hand
Holding me up when I give in,
And give up the fight
flat on my back,
trusting you won’t let me down, or drown.
But I didn’t, God.  Silly me.
I thought I’d visit you and try again.
(I hope you know that the fact I’m there
Means I haven’t given up, not totally,
Not yet.)
So here’s what I want, today;
I want this instead of Tashlikh:
I want you to make it rain.
I want you to take the waters that you’ve sucked up during this long, scorched, yellow summer
And pour them down on me.
I’m parched, God.  I could be dying.
I want you to rain down the waters
that might have been the stream I’d Tashlikh into
And make it flow
Abundant and life-bearing.
I want you to write little fortune-cookie messages —
Apologizing to me,
Forecasting only good things —
And have them wash up onto the shore
Where I can collect them and paste them
Into my journal.
On this day when other people are discarding pieces of themselves
I want the holes in me filled.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes — including journaling and creative expression — at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania. She leads a non-fiction writing group and works with individual students, and is continuing to write Jewish-themed readings for what she hopes will become a book, In the Spirit of the Holidays.

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August 20, 2012 · 7:54 am

London-Munich, No Connection

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

There are 569 miles between London and Munich.
You can get there by
British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and American.
The flight takes 1 hour and 9 minutes,
and costs about 240 euros.
Both are modern cities
with busy financial centers.
Both held Olympics 40 years apart
with pomp and pageantry in
opening and closing ceremonies.
England won 4 gold medals in Munich;
Germany won 11 gold medals in London.
At the end of the games in Great Britain, in ’12
all the athletes left via Heathrow Airport.
At the end of the games in Germany, in ’72
not all of the athletes left via Munich Airport.
There are 569 miles between London and Munich,
but between the two cities, there is no connection,
no remembering, no memorials,
just distance,
just 569 miles.

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 a new 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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