This Too Crazy World
Before he uplifted buildings from their foundation the golem demanded to know the truth, for he had grown way beyond his britches and forsooth was capable of anything weirdo, which is why I let him in on my dark secret– didn’t need for him to be a surrogate, a cork stopper for my long dead […]
Forest in the Trees
Along Leona Canyon, it’s past time for dog walkers to crowd the trail, we head out, hills greener from rain, a private consult between me and my partner-in-crime from the thirteenth century, who’s startled by a collection of oak balls, withered and dead on arrival; he thinks maybe it’s a burial site, a mass castration; I shake my […]
That Time of the Month
He expands in my pocket like a tampon filled with blood. He’s getting bigger and stronger, beats his way out of my purse. Now there’s a hole in the leather, wallet and credit cards fall out; I bend down and pick up everything, wrestle him into the passenger seat and snap the belt. He starts crying. […]
Elmo, My Golem
He slinks around in a navy-blue hoodie and sweatpants, black leather gloves pulled over his hands to hide several missing digits, my fault for not shaping five good fingers from the left-over cheese and crackers. Now he looks like Elmo from Sesame Street, only no red fur, and not as cheerful. I’d hoped for him […]
Creation of the Golem
He floats in my dreams like debris from a Shreveport wreck, and in a last ditch effort to ban his jetsam from washing up on my shore and decomposing on freshly clean sheets, I create a profile, list six things I could never do without, six things I don’t know what to do with, tap […]
The Golem
We’ve had this talk before when I didn’t know who else would listen to me standing at the last bench of Leona Canyon—you know the one—dedicated to the Jalquin people circled by dried thistles like petrified tongues? How you drifted from the house before ashtrays were emptied, butts crushed and sealed with a blossom of lipstick, the kind of Revlon your friends could afford, neighbors […]
Yizkor 2016: Kehilla Community Synagogue
Hear Lenore read “Yizkor.” White robes and prayer books automatically flip to the right page, and the cantor, voice of the synagogue, possessed by the spirit of the sanctuary, blesses us with a three-fold invocation, passed along through the centuries. Facing each other for the priestly blessing, shawls tented above our heads in stripes and fringes, I […]
Wandering in the Desert
I want to wake up each morning without remembering your voice, how we used to wrap around together in one invisible seam, a velcro from head to toe. I want to wake up each morning knowing I’ll be okay get everything I need to get done without convincing myself for the hundredth time it’s over. […]
Mortal
The way forward is with a broken heart. –Alice Walker (With thanks to Elizabeth Bishop, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frank Sinatra and W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan) I was the myth you stole from the twenty-second floor of my apartment building overlooking Long Island Sound and the Orchard Beach of my childhood growing umbrellas and empty beer […]
Ode to Aunt Elsie
I look at the walls of your town house where you lived for more than forty years and died after your hundredth birthday just as you predicted you would. I’m looking at your walls, family photographs of children and grandchildren, obligatory framed pictures of you and your husband from a marriage you endured; paintings of […]