In My Oma's Hand, and: American Family, and: Sweet Dreams, and: Oma

In My Oma's Hand

In Gothic script
on paper now so brittle,
almost sixty years old,
it falls apart at the touch.

Meine lieben kinder, my beloved
children, she writes
to the ones
who made it to America,

and I cannot read any further.
I know how it will end.

American Family

On my mother's dresser is a passport photograph
of her cousin, Bertl Katz, at 13 years old.

My mother's family tried to get her out of Germany,
filled out affidavits, tried to sponsor her, but they didn't
make enough money. Cousin Marion had enough money,
but didn't want a greenhorn in her home with her two young sons.

Bertl escaped to France, my mother told me,
and tried to cross the Pyrenees into Spain.

Sweet Dreams

Sometimes I dream I'm the one who kills Hitler.
It's simple. I walk up to him,
shoot him in the face, and watch his head
explode into a million
glass pieces that clink on the floor
like a Saturday morning cartoon character.
Except he doesn't get back up.

And sometimes I am Yael.
I invite him into my tent as he flees from his enemies.
He tells me he is thirsty, and I
give him milk, and he falls fast asleep.
I pick up a tent pin and a hammer. I drive the pin
through his temple until it reaches the ground.

Other times I'm part of the plot to assassinate him
aboard his plane. This time I make sure
the bomb explodes. He falls faster and faster, crashing
with such force the earth swallows him up, as if he never

existed, and I'm sitting on the back porch, the sun is shining,
and all my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles
are laughing and telling stories.

OMA

On Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, people pack into buses,
and I watch mothers try to quiet their babies,
tell their older children to behave.

At Yad Vashem, I see pictures of people packed
into cattle cars and the mothers who tried to quiet their children.

I sit on a stone bench outside, try to get some air.
I tried to get all my children out,
but it was too late.
There was nothing more I could do.

It's okay, Oma.
You did everything you could.
It's okay.
Don't go, I whisper.
But it's too late.