came from a shtetl they swore
didn’t deserve a name.
The youngest kept finding stray
stones from the old country
in their pockets. Aging ones swayed
in murmured prayer, sucking
hot tea through spoonfuls of jam
to sweeten the strange
words that stuck like stray seeds
in their teeth. The oldest still
squinted into the ocean
between the nameless place and the raw,
numbered streets. Those never left
the block. When we grandchildren
asked why, they laughed at us
in Yiddish, pursing their lips,
gargling gutturals they said meant
“Not for children.” They were
born gray-haired, spattered with grease—born
to embarrass us just by sitting, resting
swollen feet on plastic slipcovers,
muttering “Cossack” and
“pogrom.” When we asked why
they didn’t have TV, they made us
apple strudel, herring and challah,
complained we ate like birds. Busy
stockpiling precious jars of used and re-used
chicken fat, what did they know of Twinkies
and Wonderbread, of astronauts
who drank neon Tang on the moon—
of classmates with tiny upturned
noses that can smell
where a child comes from?
Copyright © 2019 by Rose Auslander.
