POEMS

A sampling of poems; two are found in The Pugilist’s Daughter, published by Blue Jade Press, LLC, in Spring 2022.

WE BELIEVE, IT BE

where Church Street meets Bloomfield Ave
meets South Fullerton meets compassion

I am surrounded by a fearless
gracious group of new friends—

week after week of destruction
to our country, constitution, our citizens

we gather every Sunday on four corners—
our church, our mosque, our synagogue, our solidarity—

holding signs       holding joy    holding each other
holding pride    holding belief    holding hands—

one solitary rule
no hate—

it is a single mother holding court between
taking care of her special needs’ son and standing strong—

it is a grandmother with five-year-old Zara
holding her sign—Be Kind to Children…Please—

it is an eighty-something widower who shows up weekly
with home-baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for all—

even when he doesn’t show, his cookies do—his vintage shirts
include a Three Mile Island tee he vowed to bequeath to me after he’s gone—

it is Milena, a 30-something immigrant from Ukraine,
speaks no English, walked across the border into Poland

with her newborn—here she stands holding her two-year-old
holding memories holding faith in strangers who will hold her—

it is a trans college student, terrified, amidst an already shrinking
safety net that fades faster day after week after month after season—

here they stand, bold, exposed, holding
Trans Rights Equal Human Rights, Be Kind—

it is an Iraqi vet, an Afghan vet, a Vietnam vet
holding wounds, holding lessons, holding history—

it is daughters, fathers, mothers, sons
week after week holding, engaging, dissenting—

it is Julie and Liz, our impassioned guides who organized
a resistance holding humanity holding courage—

it is Julie and Liz, our stalwart guides who demonstrate
compassion equals action equals reverberation—

it is a poet who questions god but every Sunday afternoon
finds faith on a corner in her hometown—

it is a poet holding signs, holding joy, holding hands
with strangers she now calls family—we believe, it be

HOLLOW (WHILE THINKING ABOUT PRIMO LEVI)

From my fourth-floor walkup
above the Vistula River   I watch
a snowstorm in October   I wait
Snowbanks like your absence

suffocate   Inside a battered
hallway entrance of my address
I search my tin can postbox
for love letters you forgot

to mail months ago    Across
oceans    countries    time zones
you light another Salem    love
another woman while I will

a pre-war ten-pound telephone
to ring at midnight    Deafening
silence occupies my two-room
flat    unsolicited     I notice snow

looks different here   Polish snow
October snow    I dream your nicotine
lips will splice us to the Vistula   Choking
memories of your skin on top of her skin   

shifting    skimming    lifting    expecting
me to understand you loved her once
but now    her crazy frightens you
yet you abide and lie beside her manic

fits     this and an ocean    your alibi
When I ask for you    my voice
frightens me against history’s
bloodstained silence   Tenacious

hunger surges around me    feeds
my veins through an invisible I.V. 
Familiar window panes divine cold
from desire    You do not write or call

Outside snowdrops fall into a river’s endless tide
                I contemplate a not-so-famous suicide

FOR UKRAINE

 where children once played
seven-foot-high sunflowers
sprout from burning cars—

a last bridge topples
singed sunflower petals fall
where does one sky end—

she sings, she sings—her
voice drowns out air raid sirens
missiles raining down—

she sings, she sings where
seven-foot-high sunflowers
will grow in Springtime—

BEYOND WONDERLAND

                        New York rain stipples
                                    early evening and crabapples
             at the corner of 5th Avenue and 74th.

            Alice, the Mad Hatter,
            and Dormouse greet protestors
                        who march six feet apart, masked

                                    against droplets and shrapnel.

                        In this year,
                                                we inherit our
                                                shame.             

                                                Beyond a fantasy
                        that provides shelter
                        for a weary decade—           

beyond the Hudson River—
home to kayaks and escape routes
                        beyond Museum Mile

                                    marbled with undulating light
                                    and shade for a parade of marchers—
            beyond Sheep Meadow speckled

                                    with pigeons and coffins
                        a trail of coffee cups
                        gives way to blood stains.

                        In this year,
                                                a meat locker                                 

                                    stores our dead.

            It is June.

                        An almost summer sun dangles
                                    heavy as a grapefruit. It threatens
                                    to break through a round

            of purple clouds and corpses. I ask my friend
                        if I can move in when the end
                                    is near. She says the apocalypse arrived.

                                                            We barely survived.

                        In this year,
                                                we weep more   for the living       

                                    than for the dead.

HISTORY
When do we look backward

and smile at what we see

Lunches that embarrassed us become cool—

            kasha varnishkes & luchen kugel

            we tossed away at school,

            suddenly an homage

            to our beloved Grandma Rose—

When did we start rearranging memory—