Poetry Collections
The Shomer
Pressing
My mother leaned into the stroke
as she pressed our sheets. Her right hand
eased the iron forward and back, slow
glide for once she could lead. Her left hand
smoothed bouquets of pink and blue.
She aimed the plastic water bottle,
sprayed at upstart flowers, pressed again,
end to end. Mist sizzled above flattened
blossoms. Next came his shirts – she hated the collars,
cuffs, the buttonholes, button-side’s slalom,
her wrist twisted so as not to crease it up,
my father always critiquing her job on them.
But sheets were her held territory, her private habit.
She looked down at me, offered to teach me to iron.
I shook my head. She warned I’d never find
a rich husband – who’d marry me?
Now I study my own well-seamed hands –
they could use a good pressing. But my sole
skill’s a bent for irony. Her gray-padded
board’s been junked and the ironer no longer
offers up the scent of dried flowers
or her lesson for arranging calm.
Though I did land a guy who spurns
oxford shirts and leaves me
free and fumbling for her touch.
I fold myself thin as an apology
in the bed ‘s rumpled linens and
imagine her warmth pressing me.
The Shomer
Klimt's First Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907)
Neue Galerie, New York City
Once upon a gold-leafed tapestry
she poses:
The glow of iris’ amber dispels shadows from her face, a black coif
halos her head.
She is corseted in a gown of gilded fabric banded with triangles
and the Egyptian god-eye.
Our Byzantine Madonna – yet her web of hands clasp not in prayer
but to hide a deformed finger.
Her coiled arms carry ghosts, an infant son, two embryos,
their deliverance untimely.
A gem-encrusted choker cinches her hinge of neck, tightened
by the husband twice her age, a marriage arranged.
Full blown, her rose mouth speaking:
we can only guess.
Stripped of a Jew name, spit-shined to a gloss – anonymous
woman in gold displayed by the Third Reich
until reclaimed, now rehung among new masters. From a chaise
of filigree, she watches us
watching her,
the seducers,
voyeurs, vandals – our eyes imbibe her potent luminosity
as we partake in the spoils of mastery.
Remnants
I squeeze myself into Lara’s silk jacket.
The sleek lining grabs at my larger frame.
It fits so well, her husband, left
widowed, assures me as I stand before
her full length mirror, fish out of water,
my dishwater frizz curling over
the mandarin collar. We are mesmerized
by the black houndstooth stitched into
the salmon-dyed body and the tiny black stars
appliqued down the sleeves, a designer’s
creation I would never have had the nerve
to buy. My fingers comb the fabric
for a thread of her chestnut hair but
the treatments had balded her to smoothness.
I make myself
wear Lara’s jacket to the ballet,
La Sylphide, a performance she’d wanted
to catch. Strangers, so well-dressed, stop me,
the imposter, to compliment the weave
pulling me tight and I murmur thanks,
trying not to describe the phantom
arms that hug mine until I can’t bear
the tugging – I throw off the jacket
then quickly drape it over my shoulders
to save the shape. How can I tell her
the love of her life made love
to me because he was not the type
to be alone, though we knew she was
the one who made our groping beautiful.
50 Years of the Moose
Of Moose Buses and Men
There are few moose in my childhood but many bus rides –
my mother didn’t drive. When I am a child I speak
as a child and never of moose. My father reads stories
but tells no moose tales. I hug no moose toys. My sole
association – Bullwinkle J. Moose, clueless, good-natured,
best pal to a brainier flying squirrel, on a cartoon TV station.
My mother and I ride the bus to Mme Teller’s ballet studio.
Lumpy in a tan leotard and pink tights, I might call myself
moosey but I have yet to meet metaphor.
50 Years of the Moose
Later I come to understand other cultures, Native American,
Finnish, Maritime, honor moose in myths and constellations
foreign to mine despite my only-child nights spent star-gazing.
I take the 32A bus (my bra-size) downtown to Cleveland’s Publix
Bookstore, searching for romance. The only moose nearby
is a lodge that my father wants to join, but Jew members are denied.
The Circle Line bus stops at the Music Institute where I study
piano and other theories with a frustrated concert musician. There
are no moose in Saint-Saens’ Carnival of Animals composition.
On the bus back to college, a Vietnam vet insists on sitting next
to me all the way to the Windy City. He keeps trying to kiss me.
I squeeze against the window, his stink sour, spoiled, acrid.
On a boundless road trip with my true love, I finally spy real moose.
From afar, too far to smell. Standing on a crag, the majestic moose
lifts his antlered head and surveys glaciers moving imperceptibly.
Moose, glaciers, love, truth / memory melt away. The Va-
Moose bus “departs quickly” from DC, speeds to NYC. On I-95,
the burly driver announces the john is like a community bank
– his simile – it doesn’t take large deposits. Passengers eye each
other’s big gulps, chips. Poet-friend Betsy says make the poem sexy.
Google claims bull-moose urine drives the cow moose love-crazy.
Of Moose Buses and Men
There are few moose in my childhood but many bus rides –
my mother didn’t drive. When I am a child I speak
as a child and never of moose. My father reads stories
but tells no moose tales. I hug no moose toys. My sole
association – Bullwinkle J. Moose, clueless, good-natured,
best pal to a brainier flying squirrel, on a cartoon TV station.
My mother and I ride the bus to Mme Teller’s ballet studio.
Lumpy in a tan leotard and pink tights, I might call myself
moosey but I have yet to meet metaphor.
50 Years of the Moose
Later I come to understand other cultures, Native American,
Finnish, Maritime, honor moose in myths and constellations
foreign to mine despite my only-child nights spent star-gazing.
I take the 32A bus (my bra-size) downtown to Cleveland’s Publix
Bookstore, searching for romance. The only moose nearby
is a lodge that my father wants to join, but Jew members are denied.
The Circle Line bus stops at the Music Institute where I study
piano and other theories with a frustrated concert musician. There
are no moose in Saint-Saens’ Carnival of Animals composition.
On the bus back to college, a Vietnam vet insists on sitting next
to me all the way to the Windy City. He keeps trying to kiss me.
I squeeze against the window, his stink sour, spoiled, acrid.
On a boundless road trip with my true love, I finally spy real moose.
From afar, too far to smell. Standing on a crag, the majestic moose
lifts his antlered head and surveys glaciers moving imperceptibly.
Moose, glaciers, love, truth / memory melt away. The Va-
Moose bus “departs quickly” from DC, speeds to NYC. On I-95,
the burly driver announces the john is like a community bank
– his simile – it doesn’t take large deposits. Passengers eye each
other’s big gulps, chips. Poet-friend Betsy says make the poem sexy.
Google claims bull-moose urine drives the cow moose love-crazy.
Such Friends As These
Carnegie Avenue Gloaming
Cleveland, Ohio 1967
Those cumulous midwestern mountains kaboom
over me and my friends, Lort, Stinky, and Murr,
as we drive with newly issued license
along the old trolley line –
past flats of burnt-out auto bodies, boarded-up White Castle,
red-flashing BAIL BONDS, past the colored people who sit
on sinking front porches, paint long done peeling,
and leafy Gordon Park where my parents once courted,
thankful we are uncolored, cruising out of sight, on our way
downtown to the Ninth Street docks to see great freighters
navigate the St. Lawrence from Scandinavia, rough men
calling out in thick tongues we think we understand,
to the late night TV station to unmask Ghoulardi, MC of Creeps,
to the Nut House to inhale its roast with scavenging bums
not yet forgiven as the homeless,
not knowing all I have to do is reach across the plain
of seat, touch the driver’s blemished cheek, trace
its pitted hollow newly shadowed by fuzz
and not flinch – maybe Lort and I will be
lovers before we grow and pull away.
Jewish Girl's Guide to Guacamole
These avocados have been chosen carefully,
firm to the touch but supple like a baby’s
tochis. Peel the fruit’s skin tenderly
before mashing the dense green. Stir in
the red bite of salsa infused with chili peppers,
cumin, garlic, a bissel salt. Then squeeze
the clear yellow of lemon over the mishmash.
These colors are strangers
to the complexion of Jewish foods –
variegated browns of brisket and kishkeh,
umber of chopped liver, bronzed beige
of blintzes, crisped copper of potato latkes,
dusted tan of kreplach, k’naidlech, k’nishes;
translucent gold of chicken soup.
These foods, the cast of autumnal earth,
of soil and sand and dirt, of land we lived off
but could never own, we put into our mouths
that we may grow roots into our migratory lives.
Refugees, we chew quickly, our cheeks
streaked with grease, to taste
the mineral pigments before they dissipate.
These foods are cooked slow,
the longer the better –
boiled, baked, roasted, simmered, stewed,
until they wrinkle, wither, fold, implode,
the exact time and temperature
no matter, as if heat could burn
the bitterness from our repast.
