II. Kingdoms

 

HEROISM

Sing, muse, the rage in which my brother seethes,
that sends him with his cane to walk the streets,
a witness pouring out his wrath on creeps.
The worms, the villains, stupid, sickening!
––A war cry aimed at those who let their dogs
excrete on sidewalks, ambushing his feet.
You evil saints who hand him masks to wear!
You dullards booming forth your nonsense noise!
Disorder, dirt, new rules, new words, new gods––
Who did this, wrecked us? Who could call it right?

Since he was born bad-centuried, misplaced,
already latecome for the hollow ships,
he missed his chance to cross a wine-dark sea,
and counsel chieftains how to scale Troy’s wall.
He can’t high-hearted lead men in the fray
or pierce a giant serpent with his sword.
Instead, unslaughtering, he lifts his weights,
grows out his beard, a prophet in New York,
and yells, “control your killer dog, you b---h,”
when barking yon behemoth draws too near.

Arthritic-hipped he walks in pain from park
to citadel, apartment of his own,
and reads books written ere it all went wrong
(unmetered “verse” by vegetarians
is trash though frauds dare call it poetry).
An artist outside school or scene or show,
he works in wire which bending to his will
forms monstrous creatures by the kitchen sink.
Strange wonders in their fishnet ranks, they wait
in friendship with him for the final flood.

Opposing medicine, this Noah still
goes with me to the doctor when I ask.
Arriving breathless ’fore the doors slide closed,
we board the elevator, almost full,
and turn to see the one who came too late,
a woman left in tired-eyed defeat.
We won! Huzzah! She cannot slow us down
as we quest upward: cardiac, floor six.
But then my brother pushes “open door,”
small mercy disk the rest lack heart to hit,
and though we sigh in longing to be gone,
he says to her, “There’s room. You can get on.”
                                                                          – Miriam Fried


THIS CRYING THING

We had just stepped onto the elevator
when I noticed the damp
glisten in his eyes,
and I asked him if he was all right.
“Sorry,” he said, “it just
comes over me sometimes, washes
over me like a wave
gently lapping, cleansing,
waking me up to the exquisite
sadness. Or is it happiness?
I can’t quite say," he said,
pressing the button for the ground floor.
“I’m old,” he said, “and the older
I get the more I cry like a baby—
no, like a mother. No, a father—
or maybe a squirrel
in the lower branches
keening for its mate. But also
the thin cry of the hawk
that will kill the squirrel
and eat it. But the thing is,
it feels good, this crying thing
that isn’t crying exactly,
more like a breaker that doesn’t
break, doesn’t burst into tears,
but just keeps swelling,
curving deliciously, the crest
thrusting forward, the trough
forming the delicate concave place
in which I could live forever,
just catching my breath in the almost
but not quite spilling over.”
I didn’t know what to say to that
so I didn’t say anything,
and we stood alone together
in the silence. Then the elevator doors opened
and we walked out into the light of day.
                                                             – Paul Hostovsky
 

LITTLE THEATER

At last, the intermission lights come up
And she can fill my plastic tiny cup
With jug wine sherry at the tip jar table.

It's only when she smiles that I am able
To recognize the gray eyes and the Titian
Tresses: Linda? Working intermission?
This woman's brilliance once kept Doubt alive
And helped a fading Beauty Queen survive.
A green-fuse force through Chekhov, Shakespeare, Shaw,
She'd had the power to leave a house in awe.

Recovering, I ask her what's up next,
And from her jeans she pulls a dog-eared text:
Saint Joan, with five weeks to the first audition.
Till then, her diffidence lies in remission.

That play! At fifty, never really pretty,
Long odds. I fight to hide some hint of pity.
For now, a costumed summer docent gig
For tourists. Norma-like, she is still big;
It's opportunity that's gotten small—
The dwindling chance for one great curtain call.
The shameless tip jar takes my ten-spot in,
The lights blink, and the last act can begin.
                                                                 – Len Krisak


VOCATIONS/EVOCATIONS

Early that morning
I was told I see in circles,
not rectangles, “We’ve different views.”
I don’t know why he said that.
I was photographing Route 1 office expansion.
A construction foreman 6’1” told me this
and I’m 5’8”
I suspect our heights
had nothing to do with it
or my clean upper lip,
his trimmed mustache.
The photographs were good
the buildings were plumb
he was right.

I’ll credit buildings
they hit me as marvels
out of touch with cosmic globes
but standing,
needed,
conscientious.
“Problems,” his helper said,
so he went.
I was awed by that nimble workman’s climbs
on squared structural steel,
his familiarity with angles
not mine.
                  – Harvey Steinberg

 
Jane Snyder
THREE POEMS

BLUE VELVET BAG

how I loved the
silky feel of running
my fingers through
the fringe on my
father’s tallis and
watching as he
gently folded it into
the blue velvet bag
in those moments
when the world
simply seemed
to stand still*

BIG MACHERS

Grandpa David
once dined with
Moshe Dayan
they were both
big machers one
in Israel and the other
in The Free Sons of
one wore an eyepatch
and my grandfather
just his pride

TALL BEARDED JEW

Great Grandpa Yankel
tailored clothes for
rich Gentile ladies
who sent their fancy
carriages into the
ghetto to fetch the
tall bearded Jew
with golden hands
whose eyes were as
steely as his needles

***

IN NEW MEXICO

Juan Montoya hides
behind solidity of doors
and shuns transparency of windows.
Somehow ill at ease,
he creeps home on Friday
an egg bread under his arm
while his grandmother lights candles.
He trusts the craftiness of foxes,
as he tries to reconcile the past
with the present that
grows smaller every day.
Yet he plants trees,
and hears the secrets
whispered by the wind
in a language he does not know.
                                                    – Mel Goldberg
Note: in New Mexico there are descendants of “forced” Jews, who accepted Catholicism outwardly while retaining Jewish practices in secret.
 

 

FOCUSING

Sometimes I feel like a pawn in a cruel chess game…when I look down and see the speck of my body in
this vast world of chaos-groping for my tikkun (soul rectification)
Sometimes I feel totally shalem (whole)...knowing why I am here in the Divine army
Victory
Of light over darkness
Sometimes I am in holy katnut..(small mindedness) piloting my kitchen as I peel, chop, soak, bake etc. All of the malachot (acts of working that manipulate reality)
Soon forbidden as I prepare to tune into a cosmic peaceful silence of surrender
L’cvod Shabat Kodesh (in honor of the holy Shabat)
Sometimes I am the voice of the imahot (our foremothers)
Comforting conversations with those so stressed
We have the best Defense system
Ha Kodesh Baruch Hu (The Holy Blessed ONE)
Yes, that is all that is left
I cannot man or woman the iron domes
A gun will do me no good
Nowhere to go
I find comfort in my nahala (my Divinely given land inheritance) doing what mitzvot I can
As I write my books and teach as I try to really walk my talk
I hope the gate of prayer through painting will be opened as
I discipline my time
The precious amount allotted in my gift of life
I pray to focus on what I can do
                                                  – Nechama Sarah Gila Nadborny-Burgeman
 

 

PRAYERS FOR THE WOMAN UNDER THE BRIDGE
Italicized lines are from Yom Kippur morning service prayers.

Today no sign of her pushing a loaded cart,
squawking about a bum leg as I pass the bridge.
No sign of flowing gown and tossed hair. The train
rattles overhead yet the path is smooth, lined
by trees, and I think of one student, on probation,
his admission, at ten years old living under a bridge

he crept into a video store, started selling
to the underbelly. I walk as if I could keep
the growing things awake and clasp their power
into my life. Monkey puzzle trees line the path,
not native like oaks with their own gnarls
patterning light. I can't help the woman who churls

her fist at fast walkers in zipped-up sweatsuits,
anyone who comes close or a slow moving bike
with a boom-box-basket. Her eyes pour fine contrary
dust, not tears, and leaves twine in a dryad-mix-tape.
I pray you should be the one receiving the word.
On my walk back she's there, feet dangling

over the creek near a young stand of redwoods.
Do I hear a prayer or am I examining my conscience?
Your song comes from no song.
What can I vow that will stop birds flying
into glass or snails called invasive from breaking
the code of a lake wrought long ago—all the vows

will not stop the narrative. This is not a prayer
for a woman who lost everything—
she sewed tight that decree before Moses.
A book now sealed. A book yet to be written.
In my garden, I refill the bird bath.
It's already autumn in my mouth.
                                                   – Laurel Benjamin


EMERGENCY ROOM

I watch the ill, the frightened,
the diseased, the demented,
huddling in the waiting room,
devastated beyond hope.
Only sad resignation
keeps them from collapse,
dissolving into disfunction.
Only vestiges remain
to define a human being,
at least remnants of one.
                                      – Gary Beck


MY GRANDFATHER’S CANE

At first, Solomon ruled over the upper worlds and the lower worlds and whispered
to the winds as one man to another and magnified his deeds and his wives till Ashmodai arrived, looking like him, and sat on his throne and Solomon
wandered around like a crazy man under the sun saying:
I am Solomon son of Bathsheba, I was a king

The Gemara relates that in the end King Solomon ruled over nothing but his cane
And the Izhbitzer Rebbe writes: Know that in that cane all the world was contained

I am looking at my grandfather who hardly rules over his cane, not over his bodily functions not over his wife not over his family
He holds on to me and to his wooden cane to go into a small room
in the house that was once his kingdom
lets himself be placed without resistance in front of the television
a Tripolitan Tony Soprano with no strength left. He mutters: I am Ami-Shaddai son of Hiriya, I was a king
And I looked into his cane to see if it contained the world
but I found nothing
                                   – Amichai Chasson

                                      translated by Esther Cameron
 

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