Family & Ancestors

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ ll tell you:
Life for me ain’ t been no crystal stair.
It’ s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’ se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’ s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’ t been no light.
So boy, don’ t you turn back.
Don’ t you set down on the steps
’ Cause you finds it’ s kinder hard.
Don’ t you fall now —
For I’ se still goin’, honey,

For My Daughter

I love her fierceness when she fights me,
shouting "Not fair!" Her eyes slitting
like shutters in cities by the sea.
Her life is rife with bonfires — seen and unseen —
fires that burn through the turning years
bringing her to life again, and again, in a miracle of smoke.
This heat gives her a sense of forgiveness — or so I imagine —
she kisses my back, capriciously, when I scold her.
Maybe she recalls the scalpel by which she was born.
Easy, the mark of its slash in my skin.

Windchime

She goes out to hang the windchime
in her nightie and her work boots.
It’ s six-thirty in the morning
and she’ s standing on the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,
hammer in her right, the nail
gripped tight between her teeth
but nothing happens next because
she’ s trying to figure out
how to switch #1 with #3.

The Lamps Are Burning

“The lamps are burning in the synagogue,
in the houses of study, in dark alleys....”
This should be the place.

This is the way
the guide book describes it. Excuse me, sir
can you tell me
where Eli lives, Eli the katzev —
slaughterer of cattle and poultry?
One of my ancestors.
Reb Haskel? Reb Shimin? My grandfathers.

This is the discipline that withstood the siege
of every Jew;
these are the prayer shawls that have proved
stronger than armor.

Running Away

In the green rags of the Bible I tore up
The straight silk of childhood on my head
I left the house, I fled
My mother’ s brow where I had no ambition
But to stroke the writing
I raked in.

She who dressed in wintersilk my head
That month when there is baize on the high wall
Where the dew cloud presses its lustration,
And the thrush is but a brooch of rain
As the world flies softly in the wool of heaven.

Oil & Steel

My father lived in a dirty-dish mausoleum,

watching a portable black-and-white television,

reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica,

which he preferred to Modern Fiction.

One by one, his schnauzers died of liver disease,

except the one that guarded his corpse

found holding a tumbler of Bushmills.

"Dead is dead," he would say, an antipreacher.

I took a plaid shirt from the bedroom closet

and some motor oil — my inheritance.

Once I saw him weep in a courtroom —

neglected, needing nursing — this man who never showed

Self-portrait in a Gold Kimono

Born, I was born.
Tears represent how much my mother loves me,
shivering and steaming like a horse in rain.
My heart as innocent as Buddha's,
my name a Parisian bandleader's,
I am trying to stand.
Father is holding me and blowing in my ear,
like a glassblower on a flame.
Stars on his blue serge uniform flaunt a feeling
of formal precision and stoicism.
Growing, I am growing now,
as straight as red pines in the low mountains.
Please don't leave, Grandmother Pearl.
I become distressed

[listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying]

listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying
the day fades and the starlings roost: a body’ s a husk a nest of goodbye

his wrist colorless and soft was not a stick of chewing gum
how tell? well a plastic bracelet with his name for one. & no mint
his eyes distinguishable from oysters how? only when pried open

Snakes

I was 6 and
I lost my snake.

The table shook
I can do better
than this
and shambled
to the kitchen
to the scene
of the crime

I was green
I put my sneaker
down, little shoe

I felt the cold
metal tap
my calf

moo and everything
began to change.
I am 6
turned into lightning
wrote on the night

At 6, I was feathers
scales, I fell into
the slime of it, lit

En Route to Bangladesh, Another Crisis of Faith

Because I must walk
through the eye-shaped
shadows cast by these
curved gold leaves thick
atop each constructed
palm tree, past displays
of silk scarves, lit
silhouettes of blue-bottled
perfume — because
I grip, as though for the first
time, a paper bag
of french fries from McDonald's,
and lick, from each fingertip,

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