Peter Austin, Sandra Braude, Tarryn Cohen, Jenna Moch, Tamar, Ben Wilensky, John Yarbrough
I am
I am kind and caring.
I wonder if there is ever going to be world peace
I hear birds chirping.
I see trees swaying back and forth.
I want there to be no antisemitism in the world.
I am kind and caring.
I pretend not to care what others think.
I feel the wind blowing through my hair.
I touch the earth with my hand.
I worry about the people in Darfur.
I cry about the death of those who I love.
I am kind and caring.
I understand my love for my family and friends is infinite.
I say I will always be there for those who need help.
I dream about the world living as one.
I try to be the best person I can be.
I hope that someday everybody will live as equals.
I am kind and caring.
Jena Moch
Mama Afrika
Where are you mama?
Where are you Afrika?
Where are you?
I call for you in the night
The dark night
Black as night
I call
Where are your breasts that fed?
your milk’s run dry
we drank like babes
our thirst never quenched
where are the hands that held?
strong hands
uniting, inviting
hands now tied
struggling
writhing in pain
your screams piercing
you have become the savage beast
tearing us apart like flesh from the bone
over the earth, through the seas, beneath your lair
devouring everything in your wake
leaving scraps to the AIDS of vultures, hyenas
Mama Afrika
you are dead
buried with the bones and ash
Man married you with dowry of gold and
diamonds
now they have raped, murdered and pillaged
leaving behind a wounded beast
No longer mama
No longer Afrika
No longer
Tarryn Cohen
Translating the Biblical Song of Flight
Dive into the centerswim into the guts of great mother sea
Separate her borders splash across her
boundaries heave on through
Double entendres vulgurous puns
Signals the repeating believing barely beginning barely
Image the shifting signs the repeating
Bowels off closing vowels off twisting
Smoking the quill or possibly kill eternal hope
eternal faith of a
kwack kwack kwack
greening or gagging
boobs billion ten glob glistering waste upon waste
void upon void
globes burning ten
truck ton thirty a of brights the in trapped
colluding colliding grease the splattering
grace the shattering
awetomic collision
ants on the worms
worms on the ants so on with suffering salt
sick silly snot
Help
Belief awestruck an page printed the heal
cannot I
I’ve lost the way I’ve lost itall all that we are
let it be ended let there be death
what is the use hell what is the use
when up she rises and up she rises
she rises up and by God
she flies!
Ben Wilensky
Alone, I See
I sit with my companion,
my blind friend.
I say, “Look, Chanie, look –
Look at the shadows and the trees.
See how the light dances in and out
of the leaves as they sing their strange songs
in Praise of Hashem!”
She looks and says, “Very nice”.
I sit with my companion,
my bored close relation.
I say, “Look, Rifki, look –
Look at the puddles of the water.
They are the signatures of the clouds
they are the music of the raindrops
singing in low voices.
She looks and says, “Right”.
I sit with my companion
the oblivious world.
I say, “Look, world, look!
Mi Chamocha ba’eilim Hashem!
See the dewdrops sparkling on the grass
and the light that turns them to crystal fire
and the music in the deep earth.
They look and say, “Uh”.
I turn to my companion
my lonely self.
I say, “Look, me, look!
See this wonderful world
hear the music of the wind and the water
watch the shadow and light, Birth and Rebirth,
and the beauty so unforgettable.
Alone I say, “I see it”.
Tamar
Burning Words
Berlin: May 1933
It is a night so dark
that roaring fires
serve only to inflame
the dark
a night of shattered glass
and bitter dreams
and shrivelling leaves.
Amidst the megaphonic shrieks
and cawings of black-shirted boys
stream doctors, lawyers, men of rank,
their hearts ablaze with ire,
their arms piled high
with books
destined for the ravenous flames.
As the books take fire,
the pages writhe and scream with pain
And through it
there is heard
the dying Heine’s sigh:
“Where books are burned,
there men will also die”.
Sandra Lee Braude
Eva’s Diary
One is famous, one forgotten;
Both, however, had to sup
Hegemony’s sauerbraten
And to drain its bitter cup.
Every unconnected layman
Knows that ‘Anne’ belongs with ‘Frank’;
Should you mention Eva Heyman,
Though, he’ll only draw a blank.
If it’s framed as an enquiry,
You can answer that,
like Anne,She confided in a diary
When her holocaust began,
Though she didn’t find an attic
In Varad (near Budapest),
Making rather less dramatic,
Though it hastened her arrest.
Her opinions – so observant,
Of a world so inhumane –
She’d entrusted to a servant,
Ere they thrust her on the train.
They had been a living treasure,
Not a bundle in a drawer,
If she’d only had the leisure
To record a hundred more.
Peter Austin
[Eva Heyman began her diary in February,1944. Less than four months later, she wasdeported to Auschwitz and put to death]
Last Wish
My anger is so bitter
The honey of heaven will not sweeten it
More likely hell will refine it with fire
Control it with never-ending hours of torture
Direct it back on the only person that matters ME
Feeble and reminded of my daily crimes
I wish to be reborn close to the sun and BURN
John Yarbrough
