25 years later,

my mother’s still unsure
we should have come.
You’ve never really suffered,
she reminds me, as though it were
a flaw. You don’t know what it means
to be a Jew. To be a family.
She calls us broken. Writes
something about fragmented shards
on Facebook and hopes we feel
how much our distance hurts her.
I try responding with something
about faith, tikkun olam and making
whole again. Don’t use that
‘zaumni’ language America
has taught you. Hifalutin. Abstruse.
Pretentious. Obscure. The word
in Russian breaks down
to beyond the mind.
You always belittle me. She says,
Point out my flaws. But I’d like to see you
make it in Ukraine. She thinks
I’d know then what it means
to be a Jew. Once I’ve been named
or beaten. Thinks I would never
have left home so young. Thinks
I’d be afraid the way she is.
And fear would make me
love her harder. And teach me
what a Jewish family is. If we had to
do it now, she says, all ten of us, leave
everything we know and cross
the waters to survive, I know
we wouldn’t make it. She cries.
Thinks of her brother. How far away
he lives now and refuses to come visit.
She cries harder. Believes my distance
is her punishment. At least one of us,
she says, is happy that we came. 

Let ravens feed me, I’ll live on crumbs.*

on glass and paper, on bread

others call body and wine

others call blood, the sky swallowing

indiscriminately, branches misnamed

bone, unnoticed by trees, but wait,

who can survive on these alone?

Call our black wings “unkindness,”

call us “conspiracy,” watch us peck

long enough at clouds to find

their livers. If wheat ground to flour

can turn flesh, what’s to keep us

from growing full off eating nothing

but air?

*Title taken from Yankev Glatshteyn “The Joy to the Yiddish Word” translated by Ruth Whitman

________

Julia Kolchinksy Dasbach (www.juliakolchinksydasbach.com) emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother (Kent State University Press, 2019) (https://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2019/the-many-names-for-mother/), winner the Wick Poetry Prize , finalist for the Jewish Book Award; Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020) http://www.losthorsepress.org/catalog/dont-touch-the-bones-julia-kolchinsky-dasbach/, winner of the Idaho Poetry Prize; and 40 WEEKS, forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2023. Her recent poems appear in Blackbird, American Poetry Review, and The Nation, among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Philly with her two kids, two cats, one dog, and one husband. You can also find her on Twitter at @JKDPoetry. Order signed copies of her books by filling out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GblDW6X0ARL1NLSsHTYhNQ_FrUqIZax86fw1GXR9YoI/edit

Wind through the ram’s horn. Bone-stench,
a blast from the varicose canal. Stillness
slants the swaying crowd – I await the lengthened
tone even once it spills into my ears:
the breath is sapped of air before it ever fills,
stretched and pale to be preserved, dead but not –
time is a leech that lets the note like blood,
a year milked out into the swollen abdomen of history,
its woolen pulse that ebbs from organs out to breath
and back, our corner of Toronto in a holding pattern
of sleek cars, finery, forgetting. Blithe assurance
that we are special. Wind through the horn.
The call, like a muscle wrenched beyond
its axis of return. Time is a leech.

*Tekiah gedolah is the long blast of the shofar that is sounded on the Jewish High Holidays

________

Ben Meyerson holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently splits his time between Toronto, Canada and Granada, Spain. He is the author of three chapbooks: In a Past Life (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2016), Holcocene (Kelsay Books, 2018), and An Ecology of the Void (Above/Ground Press, 2019). His poems, translations and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including Long Poem Magazine, Great River Review, The Inflectionist Review, Rust+Moth, and Pidgeonholes.

Trypophobia and Ars Poetica

To soothe a backache, my ex would dip a silver quarter in camphor, pull it
across my shoulders until the skin bruised in stinging streaks. Scraping

wind, she called it. I remembered the ritual when I fleshed a boy-goat’s hide, scraping
fat off the creature’s warm skin, hung across a log, surrounded by a flock

of human hands with hooked knives digging at it before sinews went stiff in the winter
wind. I took my blade to it, felt my own back hum with memories of its purpled

plumes of burst blood vessels. It’s hard to prepare a hide for salting without tearing
a few holes in it. Someone has a name for the irrational fear of holes, estimating

sixteen percent of us have it. Certainly this population excludes cephalopod specialists
treasuring the soft, numerous suckers of squids, or the architecture scholar

who did her dissertation on windows, or any child who has spent an afternoon
amputating seeds from the cartilage of a pomegranate, whose red hands traced

the cratered husk before devouring the pile of rubies. I think I may have
the opposite phobia: the irrational suspicion of wholeness. I am bewildered

by rituals, texts, artifacts. How in the hell does anything make it here
whole? “Holy,” my grandmother said, tugging the ratty wool socks

slipping off my tiny toes. This is the first joke I can remember, maybe
that makes it the first poem. All I need to know now is that every animal

has the exact right amount of brain required to tan its own hide.

The Day the World is Born

This morning, dew chandeliers every smiling blade
of grass, on every sleeping lawn and fallowed field.

This has already happened every morning for the entire
past year. And probably every dawn of every year before

that. How long have water molecules clung to each other
like sequins sewn into silk? Whether we noticed them

or not. Most miracles do not formally belong
to a congregation. This morning, the curtain is bandage-thin

between the worlds. Once, there was nothing
but heaven. Once, the shimmering void was

unavoidable. This morning, heaven remembers
the earth, remembers us. Heaven gave us everything:

roses, dimples, salt, wetness, wool,
mothers, butter, murder. We share a home with every wound

and every shelter that has grazed our failing
hands. Our hands cannot carry what we need

to become. This year, if we want to transform,
we will drop everything now. We will wield

the emptiness that knows only of its endlessness.
We will count the glitters of dew as they leave

each other, becoming separate once again.
Here is the way to start again: let heaven

slither in through the holes this year
left in you. Everything you’ve lost is enough

space for your wholeness to return into. Every day
is someone’s birthday. Today is everything’s

birth day. We’re all here together: holding our breath
in the delivery room. We’re tugging at the curtain,

eager to catch it all in our tired and wild arms.

________

Shelby Handler is a writer, organizer and educator living on Duwamish territory/Seattle, WA. They are a 2019-2020 Richard Hugo House fellow and MFA candidate at the University of Washington. A finalist of Palette Poetry’s Emerging Poet Prize, recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Sugar House Review, The Journal, among others. Shelby is a founding member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artists and Cultural Workers Council. Follow them @shelbeleh.

Corseted waists alternate with swelling
breasts, their weight borne on wide-hipped bases.
The twinned silver candlesticks are graceless
but hold a century-old history.
The pair stand voiceless as my own mother
who belatedly surrendered them to me.
Every Friday night Mama and I polished
the hammered metal and made the blessing.
Now I lift each candlestick and caress.
From the mirrored surface Mama’s molten eyes
bid me draw from her well of memory
to sing the burnished words so strong as to kindle
our matriarchs’ blessing.  Shimmer, shimmer,
cherished melody, illumine the kept night.

________

Ellen Sazzman has recently been published in Connecticut River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Paterson Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Beltway Quarterly, Southward, Miramar, Common Ground, and CALYX, among others.  She won the A3 hospital-themed contest, received an honorable mention in the Ginsberg contest, was shortlisted for the O’Donoghue Prize, and was awarded first place in Poetica’s Rosenberg competition.  She was also a Pushcart Prize nominee by Bloodroot Magazine.  She is a mother, grandmother, and recovering lawyer living in Maryland.

After Pittsburgh, for Auntie Joyce Fienberg

They say souls
of the unburied are
not at rest, but martyrs
go direct to heaven;

is this a consolation
for the mourner or
the mourned? I hope,
but can’t say I believe.

Children make
the best believers,
so of course, they
make the best zealots:

staking mosquitoes
in the sun to die for
the sins they must
make to stay alive.

Now I’ve forgotten
why I prayed so
hard, so I must pray
to remember, or pray

to make something
out of wonder again:
pray to believe in
our parents, partners,

our friends, and rafts
of steadfast spirits
who float a tiny flame
in a sea of doubts.

________

Ori Fienberg has work appearing and forthcoming in venues including the Cincinnati Review, Cold Mountain Review, Heavy Feather Review, and Subtropics. His collection of prose poetry Old Habits, New Markets, was chosen as the winner of the Elsewhere 2020 Chapbook Contest. He teaches poetry writing for Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. Read more at orifienberg.com and follow @ArtfulHerring for poetry and political tweets.

Why? / And why? / And how many? / And how often? / And in what ways? / In which cities? / For how much? / And is there any way to stop it? / How few of them are left? / Can you tell me which ones? / Can you see it in their eyes? / Can you measure it in their skulls? / Can fear cut a path clear across a country? / Can the bottom of your feet turn sinister? / Can someone’s god break an ocean in two? / If so, which one? / Which ocean? / Which god? / Are the tides coming in or going out this evening? / Will there be a war tomorrow? / What do we tell our children? / When the sirens come, where can they hide? / Which laws from the past can we rob for their letters? / What did G-d say about descendants? / Sands on the beach? / A collection of stars? / And what makes a constellation anyway? / Is it the shape or is it the burning? / And where is a homeland if not in a dance? / Where did we go wrong? / How did we do this? / What was your name when you came here first? / Did it spark? / Did it sputter? / Did float off your tongue? / How do you read a backwards blessing? / How do you right an upturned ship? / And how do you pray? / And how do you pray? / And how do you pray? / And how do you / pray?

________

Zach Goldberg is a writer, educator, and arts organizer from Durham, NC. He is the author of XV (Nomadic Press, 2020), and his work can be found in voicemail poems, Knight’s Library, Button Poetry, and elsewhere. Zach has represented Wesleyan University and Berkeley, CA at various national and regional poetry slam tournaments. He lives in Minneapolis, MN.

a Yom Kippur ghazal

With heart, soul, and strength I love. I dream—my God
ladders, angels, fistfuls of copper earth—my lifesap yearns to beg.

Like the fingertips of a mezuzah, a hand rises
seeks alms from air, reaches upwards like flame.

Le-olam tehé s’mol dochah ve-yamin mekarevet
though the left hand must push, let the right implore.

Veins and lines—each right hand an offering, a bird’s nest
falling open to reveal redemption’s ancient story:

Black boxes the size of a man’s palm, one for the forehead,
one for the arm, yet the tefillin are shut in my father’s hands

he is dodging through market-stalls,   behind him, halt!
seized, he must release—the wings of a dove.

In each generation I remember the miracles: You bore me
out of Egypt, seeded wings on my back, destined me to kneel.

Needs flare like wildfire, destroy us; before the seeds can scatter—
rebirth—the roundness of a pinecone dropping promise into ash.

My left hand is a suckling; it knows only how to beg,
like an infant slaking thirst, its fingers slacken from fist to palm.

How life’s insufficiency leads us to give and refuse, chastise and forgive.
All day I ask Him what He wants, all day He says—Adina, pray.

________

Adina Kopinsky is an emerging poet balancing poetry, motherhood, and reflective living.  She is originally from Los Angeles and now lives in Israel with her husband and three sons. She has work published or forthcoming in Crannog, SWWIM Every Day, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry, among other publications.

In October/November of 1941, 19,953 Jews were deported to the Lodz Ghetto
from Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg, Luxembourg, Prague,
and Vienna.  — JewishGen.org

O My Aunts,
how shall I weep for you tonight?

You, at table, the ready accoutrements
of feasting, crystal awaiting wine,
pears round and full. O My Aunts,

where must I go to find your bones?
Draw me a map on one of these
linens yet folded in crisp peaks

before you. O My Aunts, how shall I weep
for you tonight?

________

Poet and photographer, Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press, 2015). Ronda is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Her journal publications include Blackbird, Diagram, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered, among others.

I’ve been counting the Omer*
by the way your eyes flicker
into feathers before flight.

Once I got to the tenth day–
then you noticed me.
I didn’t have the heart to keep counting.

Instead I swallowed grief whole
without a blessing.

I didn’t have the hands
to say I was sorry.

*“Counting the Omer” is a ritual for Jews, counting the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah. Each day is counted with a blessing.

________

Sarah A. Etlinger is an English professor who lives in Milwaukee, WI, with her family. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of two books (Never One for Promises, Kelsay Books, 2018) and Little Human Things (Clare Songbirds, 2020) and the forthcoming full-length collection The Weather Gods (Fernwood Press, 2021). Interests include cooking, baking, traveling, and learning to play the piano. For recent work and upcoming workshops and readings, visit www.sarahetlinger.com.

My husband and I hike a trail in Jasper National Park,
linger at lakes the color of fresh celery.

The Athabasca mountains unfold across a pewter sky,
brood beneath a mantle of clouds.
A charm of magpies punctuate the sky.

I’m not at my synagogue, not chanting
Unetaneh Tokef: who shall live and who shall die.

A river sweeps aquamarine through the valley.
Elk wander across the road, the male crowned with curved antlers.
Lodgepole pines flow like water while birch trees glow
a ghostly white, souls returned from the afterlife.

I am not listening to the shofar with its call to prayer,
not chanting the Aleinu to praise God.

I miss my mother.
I want to believe her confusion has lifted,
that she sits with toast and jam, book opened.
I want to believe she is whole,
brain raveled back to comprehension.

Birds in flight stir wind,
the air smells fresh and hopeful.

Grief lightens in a hint of sun.
I lay it down among small pink flowers.

________

Valerie Bacharach’s chapbook, Fireweed, was published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag. Her writing has appeared or will appear in the following publications: Pittsburgh Poetry Review, The Tishman Review, Topology Magazine, Poetica, Uppagus, Voices from the Attic, The Ekphrastic Review, Talking/Writing, Rogue Agent, and Vox Viola.