POEMS

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

BOSTON
We learn myths about love at age three.
A stranger on the T wearing Red Sox attire
And a tuxedo jacket smiles at me

In my Levi’s jeans and long-sleeve T
That reads Save Darfur.
We learn myths about love at age three.

Will stranger attend a baseball game or symphony?
Will he invite me I wonder, as I recall last October
Your tuxedo jacket smiles at me

When you cook blueberry pancakes, brew Colombian coffee
But do not invite me to the opera and I pretend not to care.
We learn myths about love at age three.

After breakfast, I seek clues I’m your Persephone.
Between oceans and suns you’d fight for me like a Centaur.
Your tuxedo jacket smiles at me.

Memories inhabit a North End café consuming ouzo and cannoli.
No Pegasus rescue, your ghost sits beside me in an empty chair.
We learn myths about love at age three
A tuxedo jacket smiles at me.

IS THAT HIMMLER BITING HIS HIND PAW?
Inside Poland’s fragile borders, I seek out
a city I love. Kraków is a pungent memory.

Thirteenth-century cobblestones.
Sixteenth-century synagogues.

A discovery, an obsession. Swastikas
shoved sideways in overgrown graveyards

and I trip on weeds and reeds and more
swastikas desecrate cemetery gates.

Caretakers moved away or were murdered.
Tainted tombstones stacked fifteen deep

choke on Polish slurs. German insults.
I stumble into Auschwitz chasing the dead.

A fat gray cat with red blades for eyes
chases me. Hisses and growls. I run away

and hear an almost human-like voice
shout RAUS RAUS RAUS. Razor-blades

for eyes glare. I return to an unsettled
Jewish quarter where ancient goblets

filled with the honey liqueur of tears
overflow onto a Vistula River of sacrifice

and sin. Inside a modern café I devour
chocolate babka and English translations

that read, What is poetry which does not
save Nations or people? so I must unearth

Czesław Miłosz to ask him if the dead
are still disguised as birds because

while walking in Auschwitz this morning,
I saw a gray cat I suspect might be—

THE PUNCH I can’t forget that night. The night I learned I don’t want kids. The night I learned lonely is safer. The night his fist broke through their bedroom wall. The night I learned I don’t want kids. The night I inked Mom’s black and blues into my journal. The night his fist broke through their bedroom wall. I want to forget that night. The night I inked Mom’s black and blues into my journal. I can’t forget Dad’s screams. I want to forget that night. I sat on my closet floor listening to Dad throw jars. I can’t forget Dad’s screams. I tasted fear the way eight-year-olds tasted ice cream. I sat on my closet floor listening to Dad throw jars. I hid under my bed and wished Dad dead. I tasted fear the way eight-year-olds tasted ice cream. I remember Mom’s eyes after, thick with dread. I hid under my bed and wished Dad dead. I can’t forget Mom’s pleas. I remember Mom’s eyes after, thick with dread. I’m tired of trying to expunge that night. I can’t forget Mom’s pleas. My hands armed with boxing gloves. I’m tired of trying to expunge that night. When I started writing inside my bedroom closet. My hands armed with boxing gloves. I’m sick of memory’s holding pattern. When I started writing inside my bedroom closet. The night I learned lonely is safer. I’m sick of memory’s holding pattern. I can’t forget that night.

BREATH
This once was a park
now it is a hospital—
Our mouths—infectious

Silence and distance
We rehearse a new lexis—
I attempt to sign

Earth snores and loots our
oxygen—This begins our
isolation—masked

I read loneliness
kills as much as smoking does
Soon I will be 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