Accident of Fate

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

No such thing as
too many concentration camp movies.
No such thing as
too many concentration camp books.
I have seen and read many, but hardly enough
for somewhere inside of me,
I know I should have been there,
there in any camp you choose
with a number on my arm,
and my bones sticking out of my body.
I do not know how to call it,
accident of fate or God’s hand,
but I have been found guilty of the soft life
here in this land of bountiful
where I can decide which restaurant to patron,
or what popular play to attend.
I feel I should be someplace else,
rousted out of the barracks at two a.m.,
hoping to be spared another beating
or a final trip to the chambers.

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/

In the Beginning

by Arlyn Miller (Glencoe, IL)

Don’t Call it Night
The Hill of Evil Council
Falls the Shadow
The Unloved
Heir to the Glimmering World.

Inside, Outside -
The Winds of War
Everyman
The Human Stain,
A God In Ruins.

Exit Ghost.
Undue Influence
Letting Go.
The River Breaks Up,
Blood Cries.

The Healer
Between Two Worlds,
Trial & Triumph
Invisible Mending.

The Open Cage
The Liberated Bride
The Hope–
Open Heart,
Everything is Illuminated.

In the Beginning:
The Book of Light
A Perfect Peace.

As writer-in-residence for Am Shalom, a reform synagogue in Glencoe, IL, Arlyn Miller oversaw a literary column for the synagogue’s monthly newsletter.  The column– “Meelem” (Words)– chronicled synagogue life over the course of the year. One evening, as she was perusing the synagogue library bookshelves, Arlyn was inspired to write “In the Beginning,” a found poem which is comprised entirely of titles from books in the fiction section.

A found poem is created from snippets of text found in other sources and pieced together.  If the idea intrigues you, you might try looking in the Tanakh, a siddur, Jewish magazines, newspapers, fiction or creative non-fiction books for inspiration.  Share what you find with your local Jewish community or with The Jewish Writing Project.

A poet, essayist and journalist, Arlyn also teaches creative writing in schools and in the community through Poetic License, Inc. and has recently launched Poetic License Press, which just released its inaugural publication, A Light Breakfast: poems suitable for breakfast reading. You can find out more about her work at: www.poeticlicenseinc.blogspot.com.

“In the Beginning” appears in the July/August 2011 KOL, the newsletter of Am Shalom, Glencoe, IL. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

I Never Asked

by Natalie Zellat Dyen (Huntingdon Valley, PA )

My bubba taught me to knit European style, yarn on the left.
What hands had guided her hands,
Which now guided mine?
I never thanked her for that gift.
Or for filling empty jars with cinnamon cookies.
Al heit shehatanu. For the sin of ingratitude.

My bubba could have shared memories:
Of a long-ago village
Of lost traditions
Of melodies sung by her father, the cantor
Who passed on the gift of his voice
Before dying on the passage from old world to new.
But I never asked her to sing those songs.
Al heit shehetanu. For the sin of not asking.

So I must speak for her.
“I remember my own grandmother,” she would have said,
“And you will probably live to see your own grandchildren.
So right now, between the two of us, we share two-hundred years of history.”
And if I had looked into her eyes,
I might have seen her great-grandparents, her great-great-grandparents,
And all who came before.
But I never looked.
Al heit shehetanu. For the sin of turning our backs on the past.

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

Crumbs

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

It was all orchestrated by Mother.
Moments before dark on the night before the first seder
she scattered breadcrumbs around her linoleum kitchen
but not leading anywhere, like Hansel and Gretl’s way home.

It was black inside like a fairytale woods, so
each person lit a candle, searching in its orange glow
for those deliberate crumbs
of day-old doughnuts or the last shtickel of challah
from Friday night.

Illuminated, you’d search the kitchen’s corners,
deep in the nooks and the slits of the crannies,
searching for the crumbs your mother planted.
You’d have a feather, or an old toothbrush –
its bristles splayed like a newborn giraffe’s legs –
and when you found something, you’d brush it
onto yesterday’s news, or in a little paper bag.

The next morning, you’d burn it,
letting the crumbs devour themselves to nothing –
like the marshmallow that falls off your stick
and into the fire,
leaving behind only a smell that reminds you
of something that used to be there, but is no more.

If you want to be thorough, to give it your all,
you hunt in your car for crumbs,
your desk, your locker if you’re a kid,
anywhere you might have left a trace of yourself, but
not quite enough to add up to a whole.

I like this ritual,
this Jewish spring cleaning,
getting rid of the crumbs in my life,
the pieces that don’t add up to much
and have gone stale.
Once upon a time, I loved someone
who wouldn’t let me eat a doughnut in his car
and, several decades later,
offered me crumbs of friendship.
At first I accepted them gratefully
– hungrily – but after a time
I realized that even an endless supply of crumbs
didn’t add up, and
didn’t satisfy me as much as one intact cookie,
(even a boring little ginger snap,
or some other intrinsically unattractive sweet.)

So I’m telling you
when I open the door for Elijah this year
I’m not going to let just any one in,
even if it’s Elijah’s guest, if he comes empty-handed.

And even when Passover has passed,
if I’m going to let you in,
you have to bring me a pound of those buttery bakery cookies
that look like pastel-painted leaves,
or better yet, an entire cake,
one you know I like.
You see, I don’t accept crumbs any more.

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.

Hawking Sees No Heaven

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Hawking sees no heaven,
a fantasy, he calls it,
“for people afraid of the dark.”
What, no Shangri-La for the children,
no safe haven for the doubtful?
His pronouncement manifests the force
of a prison door closing on a life sentence.
Mr. Hawking, I surely respect your intelligence,
but how can you be so sure?
We are more than machine
with triple AAA batteries gone dead.
In the small, sheltered space
before you fall asleep
do you not think your soul migrates
to a higher, more peaceful place?
Sleep may be death’s counterfeit,
but we dream, do we not?
Why not then for eternity?

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/

How I Knew and When

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

Age 8 – My father hangs upside down on a pipe that was part of a fence
that separated our street from the next. All of his change
falls from his pockets. He looks so young.

Age 15 – “There were one hundred and four girls
in the Israelitisch Meisjes Weeshuis orphanage in Amsterdam.
Four survived,” my mother says.
“I remember Juffrouw Frank, the headmistress.  She made us
drink cod-liver oil each morning. She said it was healthy for us.”

Age 17 – My father tells me his father and sister, Ruth, got out
of Germany and went to Rotterdam. They were supposed to
leave on May 11, 1940, for America. The Nazis invaded on May 10.

Age 21 – My mother tells me Tante Amalia told her
that on the Queen Elizabeth to America in 1947, after she
and Onkel David were released from an internment camp
on the Isle of Man, she was so hungry she ate twelve rolls
every day at breakfast. She said it was the best time she ever had.

Age 24 – My father tells me, “Otto Reis got out of Germany
in 1941. He took a train to Moscow, the Trans-Siberian railroad to
Vladivostok, a boat to Shanghai, a boat to Yokohama, a boat to
San Francisco, and a bus to Philadelphia, his wife and three sons
staying behind. Carola Stein signed affidavits for them, but
the government said she didn’t make enough money.”

Age 31 – My mother’s cousin refuses to accept money a rich
woman left him. He says the money has too much blood on it.
My mother tells me that in 1939 her cousin had asked this woman
to sign affidavits for his wife and two daughters. She said no.

Age 33 – My father asks me to dial the number. His hands shake.
He asks my cousin Judy if she wants to send her three children out
of Israel during the Gulf War. She says she can’t let them go.

Age 42 – A waiter in a Jerusalem hotel tells my father
he should come to live in Israel, because it’s home.
My father tells him, “Home is anywhere they let you in.”

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007), a collection of poems about her family and the Shoah. Her poems and essays have appeared in several journals such as the Connecticut Review and Limestone, as well as on Beliefnet. She is a teaching fellow at Clal.

This poem has been reprinted with the kind permission of the author and Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

For more about Kirchheimer’s work, visit: http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=janet+r+kirchheimer&page=index&prod=univ&choice=allproducts&query=Janet+R+Kirchheimer&flag=False&ugrp=2

And on the Other 364 Days

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

It’s all fine
and well
to stand up against oppression
when you’re wearing a costume
and alcohol has made you more yourself,
or maybe less so,
but for the other 364 days
you are commanded
– by The Book of What’s Right,
which all religions subscribe to –
to stand up against oppression
in your everyday clothes
and your sobriety
when you’re clear-headed
– and -hearted –
and can recognize the difference
between who should be blessed
and who should be cursed,
and to skim off Purim’s skin of hysteria
– like fat globules on soup –
and see the persecution that simmers, still, underneath.

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.

A Life

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

It’s possible to miniaturize my essence
by examining the contents of my
desk drawer filled with junk.
To wit: writing notebooks, bank statements,
Swiss Army knife, business cards,
glasses case, stamps, address book -
a life residing in a box before the
end of life in a bigger box.
Perhaps God is looking at His junk drawer
deciding how to arrange all the scattered
people and things collected over the eons.
Maybe he should just leave the box alone,
let the contents shift for themselves,
or maybe he should wash away
the whole drawer and start life anew.
In His cleaning and arranging,
and in mine, we both like
to make order out of cosmic chaos.

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/

Sanctify (Veyakhel-Pekudei)

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

God, that very exacting architect, tells us seven times
What we need to build a Mishkan –
The skins, the acacia wood, the stones
The gold, the oils, the lapis lazuli –
And post by post,
Socket by socket,
Loop by loop,
How exactly to put it together
Or risk unspoken but surely imagined repercussions
(not the least of which might be a volcano or tsunami
that would force us to start from the ground up
and go searching, again, for copper and silver, etcetera).

And each one of those seven times
that we’re told about building that Mishkan
God, that very exacting fashionista,
Tells us what to use to make the clothes for the priests –
The yarns, the chains, the linens,
the agate and crystal and sapphires –
And braid by braid,
Sash by sash,
Hem by hem,
How exactly to put it together

All of which makes me feel a whole lot better
About how much I like jewelry.
Really.

And I’m not talking diamonds, by the way.

(I also have a many-color jacket I call Joseph
As in, “I think I’ll wear Joseph today.”)

So.

I like the idea of adorning myself
Not so much because I’m such a beauty
(although my husband thinks I am – and,
no surprise here, I have my own body-image issues,
just like almost every other woman I know)

No, I like the idea of adorning myself
(And I just realized that if you get rid of the “n”
you’re left with adoring and,
no surprise here, I don’t always feel so great about myself
just like almost every other person I know)

I like adorning myself
Because, as they tell me, I’m made in God’s image
And when I imagine Her I no longer see
That severe old man who looks like Santa without his suit
Wrapped, instead, in a white sheet
That billows in the wind like a March in-like-a-lion afternoon

Instead, I see someone tall and elegant
Like the Statue of Liberty if she softened into flesh
with silver hair and lots of silver jewelry
that shimmers by sun and glows by moon,
decorated with stones that breed in earth’s belly.
She’d have what people call “bearing”
She’d be what people call a handsome woman

So to sum all this up,
if I look like God
And God is a looker,
Who cares, apparently, about appearances,
Lord knows I’d better look good.

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.

Unlikely Pair

by Chaim Weinstein (Brooklyn, NY)

I don’t dare stare at this Yiddish-speaking pair;
I eavesdrop instead, not nice, but life’s tough,
Waiting here in the cold for the 44 bus.
One, white-stubbled, stooped, bushy-browed
The other, nine, scrawny, short-limbed, pale,
Under black velvet cap long sidecurls twist,
Tsitsis turned yellow beneath his vest,
Like an old book’s pages, brittle beliefs,
Each a symbol centuries in his time.
Rough sage stares at Sidecurls’ gash;
Young boy shrugs, evasive eyes.

Old man nods, tells his tale right there:
An old Riga field, survived a bomb blast,
Head ringing, a brief deaf-mute;
About, blurry lines of white lab coats,
Dying to know it, fight his fate, stand his ground.
Doctor’s voice icy now, pierces his ears:
“We’ll amp this gangrene leg in his sleep.”
Adrenalin-lava explodes to his gurgly, “Nein!”
Blue veins in taut neck thicken, loudest, “Nein!”
Docs stop dead in their muddy tracks to hear,
Mouths clamp shut as he cries out loud
Moaning heart, Shema-tongued, mouth unstilled,
So Jew-like, he survives himself alive again.

“Now, Yingeleh,” hoary one says,
“Take care of your boychik self,
And don’t take no klops from hate-filled goys,
Gedenk: we Yidden give smacks, don’t take ‘em.”
With that he hobbles into coldest night,
Leaves sadness on the sweet young face.

The little boy, guideless, sighs, confused:
Torah-seeking, no-wave-making Jew,
Or Stubbled, injustice-smashing proud one?
Ovens and gas and beatings
Now a throbbing memory in each
Like an elusive melody
Dares us to remember
Dares us to forget.

Chaim Weinstein taught English for more than thirty years at two inner-city junior high schools in Brooklyn, NY. Two of his poems, “The Shul is Dark” and “Mr Blumen,” appeared last year on The Jewish Writing Project, and an early short story, “Ball Games and Things,” was published in Brooklyn College’s literary magazine, Nocturne. He is currently working in several genres and is hoping to  share a larger selection of his work in the future.