by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

My mother singing “Tora Lora Lora,”
an Irish lullaby although we were Brooklyn Jews.
The vacuum’s roar muffled by shag carpeting
while the birch banged on the hapless window sill.
The humming refrigerator in the middle of the night
when everyone slept or paced alone in the old house.
The chants encasing me in each swaying note
as I wrapped my thin arms around my cold chest
in the cavernous synagogue.  The creak of the swing
as I turned horizontal, defying gravity in the static
of the transistor radio.  The old staccato of my father’s anger.
The loud slap on the bass notes of the bare torso
making new bruises, then the slow breath pacing in
until the danger was gone.  All the possibilities in each
novel about a girl born afraid but about to enter the calm pond
of my life and swim.  Bike tires on wet pavement at dawn.
The first kiss in the back of the school bus broken by applause.
How rain parts its pouring for thunder’s interior roar.
The mornings revved up like motorcycles, the exhaling speed
of rivers, starving for new ground or betrayed by rocks
toward the remembering willows, singing reed by reed.
The happy rhythm of the subway rocking my spine
in and out of alignment with the dark, tunneling
through water, all the buzzing bodies ferrying millions of cells
into sound, the miracle of one rushing animal carrying us all.

by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

He crossed one thin leg tightly over the other,
leaned to light a cigarette of the recent past
with the fire of the future.  Your grandfather
holding you on his lap so you could stare in stereo
across the park to the big kids kicking a deflating ball
into the present, just missing your head.

It’s 45 years after your grandfather died,
one hand holding a new pack of cigarettes,
his other hand on the door handle of his store.
The sky is unusually pink this December morning
at the end of another decade.  An envelope
on your desk holds new old photos of the others —
your grandmother, father, whole sheaves of uncles,
people you can’t remember from college,
even the ones you swore to love across streets
of change long before you understood what endures.

The first man who ever loved you didn’t say much.
You sat on his lap, dunking your cookie in his tea,
both of you lost in the black and white flashes
of a showdown at the Okay Corral, sunset
reddening the rectangles of time we call windows.
He let you be, which was how you knew what love was.

by Leonore Hildebrandt

You’re like the man who walks up to the mic
so profoundly out of breath
he manages to emit only rasping sounds
— a kind of rhythmic static —
then laughs at his helplessness
which all along has interested him more
than the pursuit of a wholesome life.

You’re like the bird who flees the nest early
who rattles and caws from a nearby tree
who declares we should never buy into
the ten-thousand things
that distract us from flying freely
only to reveal at the end you spoke in jest
while settling for some road-side trash.

You may be either fluff or wisdom
a fluid sort of person akin to butterflies
who seem never to keep a steady path
and yet travel the length of continents —
you say, play is vaster than diligence
and if the sheets have not been ruffled
love has not spent the night.

by Meghan Sterling

Tell me again why we came here,

this land of pine and water with its scent

of undone stitching, all of us busy

with our children and gardens.  My kale

did nicely this year.  July was wet and stormy,

the tomatoes drowned.  I woke up this morning

and the sunrise looked like a bowl of scrambled eggs.

I wade through shadows with my fingers

to find the words that will comfort September’s

rainfall.  I write so that I can contain myself

in a cup of tea, small as a thimble on the tip

of a mouse’s tongue.  Tell me why every morning

aches like the color lilac, why sleep is racked

with dreams of earth’s bright end.  Tell me why

my daughter shivers like a dandelion against

a blowing mouth, why my daughter in the night

sings out all her generation’s acquired terror.

Tell me again why I inherited the bad stomach,

why I see my father blurred in the mirror before

I’ve put on the makeup that hides the resemblance.

Tell me why fog tastes like raspberries, the trees

laughing in the clouds with their little hidden

leaves, the morning fallen down and sleeping.

Tell me how my story isn’t the same story

lived by the men before me, wading through

the dark into more dark, now that I’ve lost the thread.