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Piercing One Ear
That self important Portland momzer, the nose and throat man with the porcelain Chinese urns. Where does he think he is on Park Avenue? He thought he could show up the New York doctors and make me dine again. At Bishop Morris, I too would hold a glass of water to my lips and swallow just like the other alte kakers. He sent me for a cat scan and got my hopes up, but the bridge between the pharynx and my gullet has been blown-up. No Army Corpse of Engineers will come to the rescue. [End Page 75] Food can't leap from one side to the other. Perhaps Dr. Botox thought he could string a hammock. I was always a sucker for suspension bridges how their sides raise up to the sky and seemlessly remerge. For my consolation prize the great man repierced my left ear. It closed up from all the aggravation. I appreciate symmetry. With two holes I can wear earrings again. Tomorrow I'll model the blue-green stone ones my daughter brought from Jerusalem.
Willa Schneberg received the 2002 Oregon Book Award In Poetry for In The Margins of The World, Plain View Press. Her next collection of poetry "Storytelling in Cambodia" is forthcoming from Calyx Books, Spring '06. She judged the 15th Annual Reuben Rose Poetry Competition sponsored by Voices Israel, and, went to Israel in December 2004, to participate in the Awards Ceremony. She is the originator and coordinator of the Oregon Jewish Writers Series at the Oregon Jewish Museum, Portland, where her clay sculpture of Judaica has been exhibited. She is a congregant of P'nai Or in Portland and a member of Brit Tzedek V'Shalom.
Notes
momzer: Yiddish for "bastard"
alte kakers: Yiddish expression meaning something like "old farts"
