The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979–2011

Hunger

8 Hunger I It was 1913 and there was no money. She was born a runt who vomited everything, So much poverty, such thin milk, The doctor said to let her go in the dark And have another child when there was money for food But her mother persisted, insisted, For months feeding and feeding The skin on bones until she lived and grew, And still remembers hunger, even now Shaking her soft white hair, She remembers hunger and vomiting, Remembers seeing her mother approach with the bottle, Her desperate need to suck and be filled, The grip of despair, the furious pulse of will. II She remembers also the dresses her mother sewed her, Woolen, tucked, pleated, exceptional, In dead European styles that made her ashamed When she went to school, which insulted her mother, But anyway, her mother never loved her After that hard beginning. Fix your hair, My grandma was still scolding in the wheelchair Whenever my poor mother visited The Workman’s Circle Home for the Aged. Fix your hair, she would say, grimacing, And reach to fix it, and my mom got rashes, My mom got asthma before each visit. 9 III They fired my father, they thought he was a Commie, And it was still the Depression when I was born. She remembers how she tied my arms and legs to the highchair So that I wouldn’t flail and she could get the spoon in Though she and my father were hungry. She told that one to my school counselor, Boasting, and the counselor told me To distance myself from my mother, That she was crazy. I wanted to be the best mother in the world, She says in a voice like hoarded string. That was what I wanted, but I failed, Here I freeze as always, and swallow my spit. I failed, but I did my best. As a girl she was a wild one, a vilde chaya, She says into the little microphone I hold for her as the cassette whirs on. She beat up a boy on her block who cheated at cards, She refused to be tidy, she ran away from home. We stand to go to the dining room, where because The meal is free she will stuff herself as if She were still that infant, she’ll eat her own ice cream And mine, she’ll tell her neighbor that I Am her sun and moon and stars, And before I leave she will hug me As if we were lovers— She will lock me in her arms. 10 IV And I too had my dreams of improvement and perfection. Another crazy Jewish mother— I too hungered to give abundant life to my children. ...