You say because I’m always about to die, I am truly alive. My shadow stretches over fallen branches, my skin smiles under fingers of light, grass smiles along the path You say is mine. When You look at me, you see a child. When I look at You, I see a woman under a tree,…
You and me on Carlisle Street feels so illegitimate, holding hands strolling along stands of Tasmanian fruits and music stores two bars, more urbane than urban where the Jewish kids meet. flirt. buy each other drinks. but always go home alone. A rabbi once told us always have guests for Shabbos dinner. It’s a segulah…
Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back It’s been a lifetime together. Fifty years? Sixty? How many? We were never like that coiled knot only the slash of the sword could undo. I turned my back on you. You turned your back on me though still we pulled toward each other like magnets to the pole like…
Getty Images “You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot — it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that, I try to make sure my experiences are positive.” — Maya Angelou My first experience of Maya Angelou, who died this week at the…
I am walking. I am always walking. Where am I walking? I am not here. From where is this kindling in my arms? This fire? They are not mine. I am not mine. In vain – I am in your footsteps, in vain… I know, my son, I am the father. I lead you, the…
Seven years after Auden sat uncertain and afraid in one of the dives on 52nd Street, my great-grandmother arrives, finally, in New York. She was lucky, everyone will say, to have left Germany in time, and to have waited out the war with her husband in Brazil. But on September 1, 1946, she does not…
My mom can tell you stories about all her mother’s sisters. Except for two. One was stillborn. Nameless. The other was Shirley. Shirley, the second to arrive once the family reunited in New York, my great-grandfather having immigrated first. Shirley, who died, the certificate says, on May 7, 1924. Aged thirteen months. Cause of death:…
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