News from Chelm

This small candle in a glass    begins my worrythat the prayer will not even tap the ceilingnor seep through    the draft window.I blow it outto appease my mother who is afraidthe house will burn down.

Even at Chanukah, the watched menorahcandles swiftly burn to ashso we can get to bed early.So how do we mourn?

Ozick says, Though English is my everything, now and thenI feel cramped by it.

Trained under the ear of a speech therapist mother,I wonder how to put that inflection back into my English,put the tsuris back into the single language.

I was taught—We're in America now.Why do you want to do that?

English is my everything, says Ozick,        And my mind is filled with phrases I am homesick for,gestures amiss without their vocal choreography.

I turn to folktales of Chelm.In Chelm, Yiddish is spoken. In Yiddish,you can say sentences,saying one wordand gesturing another. In Yiddish there is always a story.

To live in Chelm is to be in love with commas,to punctuate your speech with "and," "so?"Share your angst with "Ach" over tea.

    I read the tales to my mother.Hah! She retorts.    That story doesn't make sense.Her forehead crinkles. She countspurl, knit, purl. Knit.    It reminds me of your Aunt Anna.She was supposed to visit her sister Asyafor a week, but never left.

I can't quite unravel the leap, butMy mother's thought loops aroundthe lost circuits of Chelm,between German, Yiddish,Russian, English,angst, and who knows what    other secrets she keeps hidden    in her unfinished afghans. Oh, that chameleon, language, that    colors and blemishes our remembering.

It doesn't seem valid to compose a sonnetto explain these linguistic flights,feathers flying off when least expected.

They land on the silland in my palm, others tickle.We are our own Chelm stories,our truth embedded in a transmutationof ourselves, as we light the Yarzheit.