-
THREE MORE TRANSCRIPTS OF ENTRIES FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN
ENTRY: March 27, 1971 So, finally he’s here. Nine months, what God, another joke? Okay, she ate the damned apple, so stick it to the snake. But what would you know, another man. For six hours I’m lying there, dying from pain before the shmendrick walks in like some king, smiles at all the cutesy…
-
LIGHTS
For eight days each Decemberthey call out to me as the flameof the candles flickers out,“Remember me” they say in unison,“remember me”, in the voice of the child,an old woman, in Yiddish,in Polish, German, Czech, Latt.I want to remember but I cannot seea face reduced to ash, blendedinto the earth of a farm field outside…
-
A TWISTED ROAD
Walking down the helicalroad, untwisting as you goyou discover placesyou never imagingedvisiting, nothinglike the path youthought you knew well. Stop and claimyour new heritage,find yourselfon an alien map,bury yourself in booksof new and ancient history. Pause here and considera King of Scotland,knights and lords,in the far distanceknow that you claima link to a manso honored…
-
FIRST TRANSCRIPTS FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN
ENTRY: July 30, 1970 So, is this fakokteh box doing anything? Hello, HELLO? Buttons, now I’m a button pusher. Some kind of secretary now. Hello? Oh, hell, if it’s on it’s on and if not that’s Saul’s problem. So yesterday I tell my Saul, “You wouldn’t believe, we’re pregnant!” And Saul says, “you mean you’re…
-
IN SEARCH OF
The cat stares down from her new perch atop the living room bookcase. She watches us move about, wondering where she might be. She can tell we are getting increasingly frantic in our search as she is new here, and we are adapting to each other still. We look behind everywhere she might hide, but…
-
TAILORING
My adoptivegrandfather could take bitsof cloth, a needle, threadand with magiclygnarled fingerscreate a garmentfit for royalty, to be wornby the old womanliving in the walkup down the street. I take wordsbits of ideasand hope,and with manicured fingerscreate whatI can only hopepasses for poetryto be ignoredby thoseliving nearbyin my suburb.
-
HISTORY
It was easierhaving no historyof my own, borrowedhistories are easily discarded. After a while, youbegin to think of the adoptedhistory as your own,and no one doubts you. I have a history nowcountries woven into my DNA, always presentbut never before seen. It is mine, I passed italong to my sons, andalthough it grows weakerit is a…
-
MEMORY
We were told the average background color of the universe was turquoise. She said “that’s because a coyote ripped it from the mountains outside Cerrillos. But now they say it’s actually a shade of dark beige, drying mud colored.” It was a glitch in the software, the astronomers said. The coyote was unmoved. She sits…
-
A LESSON TO TEACH
This is what I would tell my sons:“You came from an ancient people,a heritage of poetsand tailors, or thievesand blasphemers,of callous menand slaughtered children.I would give you these books,written by God, some have said,although I am doubtfulbut driven by Erato, without doubt.” This is what I would tell my sons:“I didn’t go to war —there were so many…
-
SHORT LISTED
A short list of my college learning: you can drink bad beer when it’s free,you can’t cram for finals on caffeine alone,you can watch Star Trek episodes for the nth time,you can make spaghetti sauce out of ketchup,Naval ROTC cadets make great radio engineers,even the news director gets free LPs,mescaline is not advised for exam…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 