Issue 10
poetry
“And Sora Laughed”
by Pamela Wax
“Frost” by Em Harriett
"It was a small town, so our meshugener was only half-crazy.”
—Jonathan Boyarin, ed., A Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry
Crazy Sora walks the streets
of shtetl-town begging food
for her armful of rags
Just a nosh so he can sleep tonight
We give some zlotys a knish or two
so Sora can sleep
so we can too
Sometimes she appraises the proffered hand
predicts a windfall a straying husband
the end of the world
prophesies from the crease of the fate line
God is glass
The sky is shedding
shards of Him
When the Schutzstaffel comes,
she walks among the chosen
Left they bark
upon seeing the rumpled nomad
mumble to herself cradling
a phantom
They prod her privates
spit Schmutziger Jew
She flings a colorful string
of Yiddish curses from all of us
in return May you crap
blood and pus marry
the daughter of the Angel
of Death hang by day and burn
by night like a chandelier
cooing and rocking her make-believe
child in her meshugener way
before laying her bundle atop our troves
sepia snapshots silver candlesticks
pillows of down
Meshugener Sora is carted away with the elders
Meshugener Sora laughs
when she realizes what an artful trick
she has played She laughs all
the way to camp all the way
to the showers
But the nozzles don't work
the stall is clogged by bodies
arms and breasts
She hears footsteps on the ceiling
We scream blood and murder
geischrei gevalt
while she claws her laughter
the laughter we used to join
into the cement walls
her fetus cackling itself to sleep
Too late to wish her luck
beneath an auspicious constellation—
Mazel tov—though billions of years
after conception
even a dying star
has matter
*
Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and the forthcoming chapbook Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have received awards from Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Paterson Literary Review, The Poets’ Billow, Oberon Poetry Magazine, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House and have been published in literary journals such as Barrow Street, Connecticut River Review, Naugatuck River Review, Pedestal, Tupelo Quarterly, Sixfold, and Passengers Journal. Her essays on Judaism, spirituality, and women’s issues have also been published broadly. An ordained rabbi, Pam facilitates online spiritual poetry writing and spiritual journeying workshops from her home in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.
Em Harriett (she/they) is a queer agender author, illustrator, and photographer from New England. They are inspired by nature and enjoy writing speculative fiction when not knitting. Her photography has also appeared in Kelp Journal, Wild Roof Journal, and F-Stop Magazine. You can find Em on Twitter at @em_harriett or at emharriett.com.