Adoption

March 25, 2023

CONCEIVE OF THIS

No child, no youth
wants to imagine the moment
of his or her conception.
Now, that is the moment of personhood
in some places, a moment when
two cells become one and is
a life of its own, but it isn’t
the convergence of sperm and ovum
we avoid, but the act leading to it.
When you are an adoptee
and only later in life discover
your now dead birthparents
that moment, that scene
is a small void in your life
among larger voids you want to,
but cannot ever, seem to fill,
so it is left to your imagination
of time, place, circumstances
and ultimately action, but you ensure
that scene ends moments before conception.

March 24, 2023

RADIOACTIVE

I cannot say for certain which day
I became the familial isotope,
but I know my parents began
accreting neutrons not long
after their marriage, bound
to their mutual core, unbound
from me, adopted into the family,
and I then became the isotope
of the family but remote,
easily enough forgotten,
when I was not present.
That is, I suppose, one possible
fate for an isotope, it’s familial
half-life up and then forgotten.

But perhaps it was just
that I was the family’s
Schrödinger’s cat, finally put
in a box into which
no one chose to look.

February 17, 2023

SAINTS AND SINNERS

I am a distant grandchild
of saints and Herod,
kings and lords, and
Visigoths for good measure.

That half of me is
woven of ever thinner
branches on a tree
that threatens to topple
from the lightness
of its other side, roots
deep in the rich soil
of Lithuania, the roots
hitting bedrock, and
the branches stunted
and there a simple
Ashkenazi Jew.

February 16, 2023

A MOMENT

It is 1952, April, and I
am handed to the woman.
I am wrapped in a thin blanket,
the tall man is standing beside her.
I do not recall this, but this
is how it must have happened,
she finally a mother, he
a father despite infertility.
I do not recall her, the woman
who perhaps never held me
once I exited her body, who
hid me for nine months.
I mourn her now, knowing
she acted out of love, with hope
for me, but only the headstone
is her touch on my hand.

First appeared in Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Volume 12, Fall 2022

February 12, 2023

GOOD RIDDANCE

I still marvel at the way
the mind can rewrite
the narrative arc of memories,
taking away sharp edges,
eroding or erasing some
too painful to relive, and
bringing others out
from deep storage, some
largely forgotten, to be
battled with in dreams,
demons wrestled to submission.

In my dreams I have had
a final conversation with
my step-sibling, who
told me of my father’s
death in a text message,
who never delivered my
nominal share of either
parents estate, who made
it clear I did not matter,
and in the dream I
pronounced him
dead to me and buried him
in a place my memory
can and will not visit.

December 14, 2022

LIFE, ABBREVIATION

Arrival noted, 11:30 P.M.
delivery normal, baby
prepared for agency, mother
released in two days, baby
to foster care, then
to adoptive parents.

No memories, save one,
a fall, bathroom, head
bleeding, black and white
floor tile, radiator harder
than child’s skull.

Now 70, the same person,
a lying mirror each day,
a small cemetery, West
Virginia, a headstone
a mother finally,
a life of mourning.

November 25, 2022

LISA, ONCE

A phone call, a lawyer’s clerk:
Can you tell me about Lisa Landesman?
I pause for that is a name I have
not heard in forty years, save
in a poem I once wrote,
now long forgotten.

She was my sister for two
or three weeks, adopted like I was,
and then Mike, my then father
dropped dead of a massive
heart attack and she was soon gone.

We were Federal adoptions, our
birthplace under Federal law, not
getting its own for two decades,
and her adoption wasn’t final so she
was re-placed and never replaced.

She won’t inherit as I will from
my cousin who died having no
siblings, spouse, children,
nieces or nephews, who left
no will, who left only kind memories.

October 25, 2022

UNTIL

I was the adoptee,
was the whole for years, until.

It is always the until
that is your undoing, was
mine when she
remarried, then two births.

I was one third then, never
again truly whole and when
she died I discovered
in her will I was only
one twentieth, and
then never even that.

I want to forget her,
forget them, deny
them, but all I
know how to do is forgive.

October 22, 2022

UNKNOWING

Twenty years ago today
and there was no band playing,
at least not for me, for I knew
nothing of you yet, and you
knew nothing of me either.

I have met you since
in a moment of silence,
looking at a yearbook picture
knowing what was not, what
never was or could be.

I recite the Kaddish
even though my Judaism
has been laid to rest,
knowing what is, and
imagining what might have been.

October 16, 2022

THE DOTTED LINE

Now that I have discovered
my Catholic and Protestant ancestors
I know it is time to consider
what hell must be like.

I know it is not fire and brimstone,
that went the way of old lore
when the Impressionists came along.

So I imagine Hell must be
very much like getting caught
looking at the new cars
in the showroom while you wait
for your car to be serviced,
having already figured out how
you will raise the money to buy it back.

The devil is defnitely the nice
young salesman who knows just
what you want in a new car even
though you have no idea, what
options you obviously need,
and before you know it he
has you at his desk discussing
how you can finance the car
that you did not want
and cannot afford after
buying your old car back.