By the Piano (Evening Melody), Rihard Jakopič, 1905, Museum of Modern Art; edited by Simona Zaretsky
Signing
The signer stands to one side
of the mayor. Her hands fly up,
first to her forehead, then to her
heart. Her fingers flutter
of heartbreak,
yet another shooting.
She conjures in me
my mother’s deaf brothers
and sisters,
she the only hearing child. When
they were little
my mother played the piano,
her siblings the audience.
She left them behind,
sailed on a ship
to America,
no man would marry her.
Before dawn
the Jews were rounded up,
stripped of their clothes, their belongings.
Five deep pits, eight meters wide,
waited,
steps carved on the edge
to ease entry.
They are signing now
from an unmarked grave,
bestowing their loving applause.
My mother knew the random
hand of mercy
and they
do not begrudge her.
Daughter
I flew to a city far
from Brooklyn where she raised me.
My mother lay in her railed bed,
wisps of hair spread
out on her pillow. I held
out my hand.
She pushed it away.
Next morning, I drove to Bojangles
for a sausage biscuit and coffee,
then back to her.
She still refused to know me,
ghost of a woman,
who fled a Russian village
by herself
and left a wrong marriage.
She swooned
when her infant was born,
the daughter
who would console her,
the daughter who now rushes
to the airport
for her flight home.
This piece is a part of the Berru Poetry Series, which supports Jewish poetry and poets on PB Daily. JBC also awards the Berru Poetry Award in memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash as a part of the National Jewish Book Awards. Click here to see the 2019 winner of the prize. If you’re interested in participating in the series, please check out the guidelines here.
Harriet Shenkman was the Poet-in-Residence at the JCC of Mid Westchester. She earned a Ph.D. from Fordham University and is a professor emerita at City University of New York. Her poetry awards include the Women’s National Book Association Annual Writing Contest in Poetry and the Women Who Write International Poetry and Short Prose Contest. Her poetry appeared or will appear in Union, the Raynes Poetry Competition Anthology, Evening Street Review, Third Wednesday, Jewish Currents, Jewish Magazine, Westchester Review. Oyez Review, The Alexandria Quarterly, Comstock Review, The Berru Poetry Series, Yetzirah, The Marbled Sigh, and in two chapbooks, Teetering and The Present Abandoned. Her new poetry collection, Wonder Wheel, is available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
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