Poetica Magazine
Reflections of Jewish Thought
Holocaust Edition
"The Boy at the Railway Station" by Shoshannah Brombacher
CHAOS
Mel Waldman
At night, I travel on a dark journey to a mysterious place
called
Chaos.
Alone, on an ancient train rushing to the other side of the
universe,
I sit inside a tomb of ice and fire
&
struggle to survive, trapped and enclosed in this eerie
smothering space,
where the raw chill of evil bites my face.
Like a captured beast in a cage, I’m a human specimen
on exhibit
in this miniature, moving zoo (for they are watching me),
a frozen cattle car galloping across time and space to
Chaos.
But why? Why are they taking me away today? I’m an
innocent man.
Why must I die?
Hunched over in a dark corner, my feverish body shakes
and shivers. I taste the miasma and gasp for air. And I
inhale
a deep fear that assaults and covers me in the windswept
snowstorm
of despair and terror.
Still, I pray to my nameless G-d, Hashem, (The Name)
as I’m
buried alive.
With my faith, I may survive this dark journey
&
all that waits for me in Chaos,
a dark dimension of many horrific places,
especially one in particular…
a place of ice and fire
called
Dr. Mel Waldman, a psychologist, is also a poet and writer whose stories have appeared in dozens of magazines including HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, ESPIONAGE, THE SAINT, and AUDIENCE. He is a past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis and was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature. He is the author of 11 books.
01/15/10
My Holocaust Poem
(for Yom Hashoah)
You must picture forever in the archives
Row upon row of lovely tortoise-shell hair combs,
Mahogany violins and curvaceous cellos,
Gold and silver wire-rim eyeglasses:
Emblems of the futile Aryan attempt to strangle Semitic ways.
May the Jewish genie stay out of the bottle for an eternity:
Divine monitor of all that is unkind,
White-winged safeguard that roosts and flutters
Over all humanity.
Barbara Hantman has been an inner city secondary English teacher, and is currently enjoying her roles as “per diem”
substitute teacher and Fresh Meadows Poets’ Corresponding Secretary. She has published four verse volumes with Edwin
Mellen Press, and CLOUD-BEAM MEDLEY and CALL OF ABRAHAM’S KIN with Xlibris. The latter two volumes have
a smattering of Spanish and Hebrew bilingual poetry.
01/13/2010
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a place on the outskirts of Kiev where more than 100,000 people were machine gunned to death in a deep ravine by occupying German forces from 1941 to 1943. Of these souls, 33,771 Jews were murdered in the two-day period September 29-30, 1941. The ravine became a burial place for Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Czechs, Gypsies, prisoners of war, patriots, mentally handicapped and ill people. The Nazis did not even spare children, old people, pregnant women. Many were shot and buried alive. When the Russian army eventually reclaimed Kiev two years later, German forces did their best to unearth the tens of thousands of rotting corpses and incinerate them, in an attempt to destroy any evidence of their crimes. The fires were so great, the light could be seen from downtown Kiev.
|
before we lay down together at the random intersection of shed our clothes like hope a boy-faced, Waffen-SS guard shivering, we gaze beyond to the turquoise Dnieper while Andreevskaya's golden domes ***** I stand in Babi Yar menorahs and microwave towers a cold wind grips my hand a statue of Babi Yar children they seek to reconcile perhaps it is simple: |
Randy W. Hurst is a Canadian poet and author. An award-winning writer, he has been published widely in various poetry print publications and poetry web sites in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
01/13/2010
Randy W. Hurst is a Canadian poet and author. An award-winning writer, he has been published widely in various poetry print publications and poetry web sites in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
01/13/2010
THE MOTHERTREE
for Blume Katz
Prostrated
before the tree
in the middle
of the cemetery,
she prayed
for her mother,
buried somewhere
in that mass grave:
for her
and so many
other murdered
mothers & fathers,
sisters & brothers
grandparents,
there in the middle of
Svintsyán, Lithuania,
lost shtetl
in the middle
of Eastern Europe
where Jews
bought & sold,
cooked & ate,
studied & prayed
worked & dreamed.
Once.
Mama, where are you?
All those long years
alone,
far away in cold,
oh so cold, Siberia,
each night I spoke
with you
in my sleep.
You were just a dream.
Now--at last--
after the Germans
with their brownshirts left,
and the Russians
with their redshirts also left,
I have returned,
I have awakened,
I am here--
but where are you?
Dear Tree,
Dear Mother,
Yisgadal v’yiskadash . . .
Stanley H. Barkan is the editor/publisher of the Cross-Cultural Review Series of World Literature and Art, that has, to date, produced some 350 titles in 50 different languages. His own work has been published in 15 collections, several of them bilingual (Bulgarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Sicilian). He was the 1991 New York City’s Poetry Teacher of the Year (and the 1996 winner of the Poor Richard’s Award, “The Best of the Small Presses,", for “25 years of high quality publishing.” "The Mothertree" was previously published in Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, edited by Charles Adés Fishman (Time Being books, 2007).
01/13/2010
On Vera’s Pitch
Terezín Childrens’ Art Collection
Vìra Löwyová 1931-1944 Auschwitz
Crayoned on coarse manila,
the grass is spring-lime,
and at the close end of the field
a red ball hangs dead-center
above the goal. The benches empty,
a swath of red shaded, behind each,
by Vera, stroking with a sideways
crayon. Two officials standing
centerline feign interest
in the match, and even with all
players on the pitch, two in goal,
Vera’s team won’t stop the ball
from hammering the back of the net.
No mothers, no fathers cheering, only
the ambulance parked at the field’s
corner, emblazoned with a red cross,
waiting to haul away the fallen.
Margaret von Steinen lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she works for Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program.
Her interest in the Holocaust began as a young teen reading survivor’s stories and biographies. Her work in Prague to help
run the program each July has allowed her to gain a greater understanding, in particular, of the history of Czech Jews during
the Holocaust. She finds the exhibit in the Terezín Ghetto Museum of the imprisoned children’s drawings, which were discovered
buried in suitcases when the camp was liberated,to be a rich source of insight.
06/01/10
My Father Tells Us About Leaving Vilnius
by Lynn Lifshin
On the night we left Vilnius, I had to bring goats
next door in the moon. Since I was not the youngest, I
couldn’t wait pressed under a shawl of coarse cotton
close to Mama’s breast as she whispered "hurry" in Yiddish.
Her ankles were swollen from ten babies. Though she was
only thirty her waist was thick, her lank hair hung in
strings under the babushka she swore she would burn
in New York City. She dreamt others pointed and snickered
near the tenement, that a neighbor borrowed the only bowl
she brought that was her mother’s and broke it. That night
every move had to be secret. In rooms there was no heat in,
no one put on muddy shoes or talked. It was forbidden to leave,
a law we broke like the skin of ice on pails of milk. Years from
then a daughter would write that I didn’t have a word for
America yet, that night of a new moon. Mother pressed my
brother to her, warned everyone even the babies must not make
a sound. Frozen branches creaked. I shivered at men with
guns near straw roofs on fire. It took our old samovar, every
coin to bribe someone to take us to the train. "Pretend to be
sleeping," father whispered as the conductor moved near. Mother
stuffed cotton in the baby’s mouth. She held the mortar and
pestle wrapped in my quilt of feathers closer, told me I would
sleep in this soft blue in the years ahead. But that night I
was knocked sideways into ribs of the boat so sea sick I
couldn’t swallow the orange someone threw from an upstairs
bunk tho it was bright as sun and smelled of a new country I
could only imagine though never how my mother would become
a stranger to herself there, forget why we risked dogs and guns to come
Lyn Lifshin has published over 120 books including three books from Black Sparrow: Cold Comfort, Before it’s Light, Another Woman who Looks like Me. Recent books include The Licorice Daughter, Mirrors, Desire, 92 Rapple, Lost in the Fog, Persephone, Nutley Pond, Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness, Light at the End She has edited 4 anthologies and is the subject of a documentary film, LYN LIFSHIN: NOT MADE OF GLASS. Her web site is www.lynlifshin.com. forthcoming in 2010: KATRINA from Poetic Matrix Press
06/01/10
In the Presence of Absence
Nathan Richardson
01/15/2010
Deportation
Time has been good to us
For the nights on the Old Continent
Were forever
Even too long to pray.
Some wept, others made love,
One or two took their life for fear.
The days were merrier,
The hustle and bustle,
The feeble light
Through the old shutters
Reassured us and we felt safe
In our hiding places
Till the next knock on the door.
No heart beat was ever so fast
No silence so deep:
But it was still too early.
So we carried on, confident that
The Prophets were looking down on us.
Perhaps, they were,
But it wasn't enough.
The day of departure arrived.
Hurriedly, we left our hearts
With all our belongings,
For we knew nothing
Would be of use anymore.
Only our memories
Were secretly packed
To assure us sweet dreams
During our final journey.
.
Wagons To Auschwitz
Pity
Was the only word
Our lips uttered
As we heard the wheels
Slowly pull out of the station.
Like cattle and pigs
We were heaped up
For assemble
And slaughter.
The young wept
The old prayed
And the smell was already strong.
Only mothers held
Their little bundles tight
And sang sweet lullabies.
We all wondered
How long the trip
Would take
Even if we knew
Whatever time
Would be too short
To meet a deadline
Where bodies were due.
Olivia Arieti
U.S. citizen, high School English teacher lives in Italy with her family. Had some plays produced and published in theU.S.A. Her poem, Daily Trains, appeared in “Women In Judaism”, Toronto, June 2008 and “Through The Desert” in the Wanderlust Review, NYC, July 2009.
06/01/10
Ruach of Celan
Fiona Lorrain
At dusk I stroll along River Seine,
at dusk I gather my prayers on you.
At dusk the dead soar on iron wings,
the living grope around a mutilated day.
My prayers at dusk isolate God,
you barely lived as His chosen people.
When the river and you joined spirits underground,
you splintered its karma with your anguish,
a survivor, when your brothers were ashes to ashes.
The wind was scorning, the wind was bleeding,
two vultures on your imprisoned mind,
they devoured its flesh till it turned depressed.
You breathed wordless in your lingua franca,
a German language read as sparse and terse.
The first line opens the wounds of a collective grief,
you looked at your trauma without sitting next to it.
No doubt, no guilt weighed on your soul
at dusk when you lunged through the sky.
and melt its snows, where German guns
slaughtered at dusk your gentle Mutter.
The Seine rinses blood, it sets ghosts wild.
Running river, gnawling waters,
widow of Death, widow of your fractured verses.
Say the world’s gone, the river spine breaks.
I wonder, does it carry you ?
Fiona Sze-Lorrain
06/01/10
Evil Led by a chauvinistic, self-appointed bastard Screaming “heil to the fuhrer”, to an untainted Germany Finish the annihilation of all inferiors Continue, continue you Jew like cowards Don’t you see ‘worms’ still squirming But his emotionless, frigid troops just stood. Until, he raised his Lugar And rapturously fired into them And when the last bodies were carelessly kicked into the pit And cries of pain and the putrescence of death was in the air He raised his arm and with evil egomanical relish Executed a resounding “heil hitler” And leaving his own wounded to die The gutless coward Marched triumphantly into the woods Ina G.Perlmuter, wife, mother, bubster, and developing poet. I do not let my dyslexia interfere with my ability to compose. My parents preached "success is never permanent and failure is never fatal but i'ts courage that counts"; I believe I have succeeded. My husband, children and grandchildren and friends have encouraged me in my writing journey. 06/01/10
Eva's Song [1] The orchestra assembles on the bleak pavement Our captors requested words of song from us, The violin begins to sound The sickening reality intoxicates me A mother howls for her baby, The need to survive Praiseworthy is He who repays you [1] Conducted by Alma Rose, the women’s orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau, comprised of fifty-four women, played beside the gas chambers to keep the victims’ minds at ease and avoid hysteria and panic. Eva Steiner was a Jewish, Hungarian vocalist. Tova Zauderer divides her time between New York and Los Angeles. She is currently a college student pursuing a degree in communications. The grandaughter of two Holocaust survivors, Tova has traveled to Poland and witnessed the ruins of the horrors of the Holocaust. 06/01/10
by Ina Perlmuter
Egging his men he continued a barage of verbal abuse
by Tova Zauderer
Fifty-four somber women
Our faces lack all signs of life
I swallow long and hard,
Earnestly trying to prepare my throat
The sound of heavy boots stomping the pavement draws nearer
Each woman tenses as the Nazi approaches
With our lyres playing joyous music,
“Sing for us from Zion’s song!”
I hear my cue to join in vocally
How can we sing the song of G-d upon the alien’s soil?
Music stifles the screams of our brethren
Drowns the scratching sounds
The struggles for a last breath in this world
Let my tongue adhere to my palate
My throat releases the same sweet sound
Yet it is disconnected from my body
Seized from her quivering arms
The Nazi throws the child over heads
Of cramped naked figures
Terror emits from their wide desperate eyes
Then he slams the shower door shut.
Propels me to continue singing
In accordance with the manner that you treated us.
Praiseworthy is He who will clutch
And dash your infants against the rock.
