Tag Archives: evil in the world

September 8, 2025 · 7:30 am

Maple

by Lori Levy (Sherman Oaks, CA)

My friend says I’m always looking for maple—

for what’s good and sweet, like the syrup made from

the maples of my childhood in Vermont.

Not everything in life is maple, she says.

Maybe I’m looking for it more these days.

The older I get, the more I notice

the bittersweet taste of life. I wish I could say

it’s like the chocolate I use to make brownies,

but it’s more like this:

as I’m sitting with a friend in rapt silence,

watching Itzhak Perlman play violin in Los Angeles,

another concert is going on in Gaza,

a bloodcurdling one of booms, bangs, screams. 

My siblings in Israel send me photos of flowers blooming

in green fields: lupines, cyclamens, clovers, daisies.

The war is in its fifth month,

but there they are, walking among irises, anemones. 

I read about an 84-year-old woman

held hostage by Hamas in a dark, airless tunnel,

how she’s given six dates to eat, her food for the day,

a bottle of water placed just beyond her reach:

she’s too weak to get up from her mattress.

Palestinians are dying. Israelis are dying.

Children in Gaza are starving. Israeli hostages are being raped.

My worldview begins to crack and crumble:

Was I wrong to believe people are basically good?

I used to laugh in denial when my daughter said evil exists.

Now I dig in the dark, desperate for a trace of maple.

Lori Levy’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod International Journal, Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, and numerous other online and print literary journals and anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel. Her poems have also been published in medical humanities journals and Jewish journals. In 2023, two of her chapbooks were published: What Do You Mean When You Say Green? and Other Poems of Color (Kelsay Books) and Feet in L.A., But My Womb Lives in Jerusalem, My Breath in Vermont (Ben Yehuda Press). You can find some of her poems on Instagram at IG@lorilevypoems. Levy lives with her husband in Los Angeles near their children and grandchildren, but “home,” for her, has also been Vermont and Israel. 

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November 5, 2018 · 7:32 am

Pittsburgh 1918, 2018

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

My father, an immigrant,
crossed the ocean,
went to live with his older brother,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant,
went to 5th Avenue High,
worked hard to understand
the strange English language,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant,
went to doven each Shabbos
in the local synagogue
a world away from the
sumptuous temples of Squirrel Hill,
in Pittsburgh.

My father, an immigrant
knew anti-Semitism, later escaped Hitler,
was spared the horror of that morning,
in Pittsburgh.

What would he have said
were he born a century later
to witness murder so heinous?

Would he have cried out to the heavens
in mourning for his lost brethren,
knowing it could have been any Jew, anywhere?

Would he have recognized the
the darkening of the national identity
as human behavior descends into blind hate?

Would the ghost of my father have screamed
in the sanctuary with the fallen?

My father, an immigrant,
died in 1974, a devout believer.
His soul lingers with the eleven,
immigrants or not, who died,
in Pittsburgh.

He never questioned
the existence of evil in the world.
Would he have been surprised
that it came home to Pittsburgh
to shatter, until the next news cycle,
the spirit of man?

Coda:

And I, my father’s son,
fail to find the fitting words
necessary to speak of this tragedy.

The stop in my throat,
the tears in my eyes,
reduces me to silent outrage.

Others may be able to speak
more emotionally, more eloquently.
Instead, I will go out to my father’s grave,
put a stone on his tombstone,
and carry eleven other stones in my pocket
in remembrance of those Jews
who can no longer speak for themselves.

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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December 22, 2014 · 9:43 am

God, Jewish and Otherwise

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

God, Jewish and otherwise,
tell me this:
Some poor people
decide to get coffee
at a small café in the heart of Sydney,
and by some accident of time,
they become hostages and victims, some dead.
Some poor students
decide to attend class
at a small school in the heart of Pakistan,
and by some accident of time,
they become murdered and maimed, some escape.
Tell me it’s part of your plan.
Tell me it’s not for me to know why.
Tell me it was destined to be,
and I will tell you,
I have to believe it’s sheer randomness,
the luck of the draw, the flip of the coin
because I cannot for the life of me
understand how you could allow such evil
to grab your poor creations by the throat
and squeeze.

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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