I Apologize

Hi Friends,

It’s been a moment and it’s Fall already. Hope you had nice summers and wishing you good things for the season ahead. In the meantime, my poem, I Apologize, is up at Vox Populi. You can read it here and down below. The poem was first published in 5AM and won the 2011 Reuben Rose Award from Voices Israel.

Until next time…

• • •

I Apologize

to my precious elders;
the valuable ones, 
those thick-fleshed
indestructible Jews
I have known, 
those who 
endured; those who
had the clenched tooth
grit to flee before 
the ovens were lit, 
those –bergs and –steins
and –skis 
those tailors artists bakers
peddlers scholars music-makers
who did not become the incinerated trash of Europe:
My own people, once stalwart as the stars, 
must now weep as we, their stunning progeny,
disappear like shadows 
into the cracked cement of sweet America
our brainless heads sucked under the white foam,
merging, whistling, forgetting, drowning, dancing,
no lessons learned, refusing to keep anything.