Yizker Bukh
Memory is
flotsam (yes) just
below the surface
an eternal city
a heap of rubble
debris smaller
than your fist
an animal with-
out a leash
organized wreck-
age ghost net
or one hanging
silence on the phone—
she's gone, my sister said,
and we wept and wept
over my grandmother
while my sister sat
with her body and me
in the static and the rabbi
they sent told her to recite psalms
as comfort so we listened to each other
breathe instead and my sister's breath was
a tunnel a handful of pebbles a knotted
Chinese jump-rope her breath was the coiled
terrycloth turban our grandmother wore when she cooked
or walked the shallow end of her condo pool for exercise—
our grandmother still somewhere in her white turban sewing
Cornish game hens together with needle and string or
somewhere in her good wig playing poker or
somewhere in her easy chair watching CNN
while cookies shaped like our initials bake
in her oven O memory how much you
erased how many holes we punched
in your facts since who knows the stories
she never told about the camps there are
no marked graves just too much food on
holidays diabetes my mother's fear
of ships and the motion of some
suspension bridges O memory
you've left us trauma below
the surface and some above
like the fact that I can't
shake the December
my sister's red hair
caught fire from
leaning too close
to the menorah's
candles, our
grandmother
putting her
out with a
dish towel
with her
strong
arms.
Copyright Credit: Erika Meitner, "Yizker Bukh" from Copia. Copyright © 2014 by Erika Meitner. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.
Source: Copia (BOA Editions Ltd., 2014)