yiddish poetry

Between Two Wars by Kenneth Rexroth

Between Two Wars by Kenneth Rexroth

Remember that breakfast one November —
Cold black grapes smelling faintly
Of the cork they were packed in,
Hard rolls with hot, white flesh,
And thick, honey sweetened chocolate?
And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos?
The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links?
Where have they all gone to,
The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours?
They said we were lost, mad and immoral,
And interfered with the plans of management.
And today, millions and millions, shut alive
In the coffins of circumstance,
Beat on the buried lids,
Huddle in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel
Over their own fragmented flesh.

filaments

hanging lamp's wire, 

blackened to camouflage

its dangle, collects 

dust as the drunken 

dusk staggers through 

dirty windows, meekly 

peeking from behind 

sober rhododendron's 

purple freckled shoulders 

my blues proxy

some skinny kid slumped on a sidewalk's weathered bench, gray to match the sky's usual mood but not today. shaggy inside his baggy black sweatpants & billowing white tshirt cradling a black bagged guitar between his knees as one pale slender arm lazily hoists a harmonica to his pursed lips. i hear him before i see him as i approach the bus stop beside the school of rock. i am tired today & have been all week, but it's not the harmonica that startles me, it's the pang in the moan of his bluesy belting, the tang in his hurtful shout, punctuated by perfunctory hoots of harmonica. i sit down on the gray bench inside the transparent shelter, my posture perfected from sitting on a cushion all afternoon, daylight stolen to search inside my cave. i feel his defiantly poisonous glare on my shoulder and refuse to meet its dark eyed dare as i look past him for a bus that refuses to arrive. trapped inside his practiced howl, i sit there and watch all the people who pass, swiveling their twice startled heads: first by the sound of someone singing & singing really well and then again when they finally locate that source of song and realize it's just some skinny little kid who has perfected the soul of misery.

and seeing is not simple

"and seeing is not simple. to see deeply enough to capture the vibrancy of life on the page, a writer must move her consciousness out of information-organizing mode into an intuitive way of seeing subtle organic connnections & capturing them in bold strokes."

-rachel howard, gesture writing




nytimes.com/opinionator

the pagan angel plays in the park

each shrouded other, born in pure daylight, worships a whirlwind of dust. an angel who loved the earth too much, who could not say no to his base lust, emerges home, inside the park, to defeat the altitude they brought. he stole & stole, voracious for bases, victory conjured from the dirt, defeating those mountains by staying low beneath their altitude, whizzing beneath their peaks. sorcerer teammates surprised their gigantic spell worked while a lone man buried deep in his cap, paces behind the scene, measuring the seam of his loss.

Flowers from a New Love after the Divorce by Paisley Rekdal

Cut back the stems an inch to keep in bloom.

So instructs the florist’s note

enclosed inside the flowers.

Who knew what was cut

could heal again, the green wounds close,

stitching themselves together?

It doesn’t matter. The flowers, red

and white, will bloom awhile, then wither.

You sit in an unlit room and watch

the vase throw crystal shadows through the dark.

The flowers’ colors are so lovely they’re painful.

In a week, you’ll have to throw them out.

It’s only hope that makes you take out scissors,

separate each bloom and cut

where you last measured. Did you know

Venus was said to turn into a virgin

each time she bathed? She did it

as a mark of love. She did it

so as to please her lovers. Perhaps,

overwhelmed by pain,

she eventually stopped bathing

altogether. It doesn’t matter. It’s a pleasure

to feel the green nubs stripped, watch the stems

refresh under your blade. They’re here

because they’re beautiful. They glow

inside your crystal vase. And yet

the flowers by themselves are nothing:

only a refraction of color that,

in a week or two, will be thrown out.

Day by day, the water lowers. The red-

and-white heads droop, blacken at the stems.

It doesn’t matter. Even cut stems heal.

But what is the point of pain if it heals?

Some things should last forever, instructs

the florist’s note. Pleasure,

says one god. Shame, says another.

Venus heads, they call these flowers.

In a week or two, you’ll lose the note,

have to call the florist up.

With sympathy, you’ll think he says.

Perhaps: With love. It doesn’t matter.

You’ve stopped bathing. Alone,

you sit before the crystal

vase refracting you in pieces

through the dark. You watch

the pale skin bloom inside it, wither.

You petal, inch by inch.

You turn red and white together.

Paisley Rekdal, “Flowers from a New Love after the Divorce” from Animal Eye. Copyright © 2012 by Paisley Rekdal.