Rivington Street

World of our fathers.

Second Avenue stories. Delancey Street.

Rivington railroad flat with murky secrets

tossed down the airshaft.

The wash that fluttered brick to brick

like damp trapped birds undaunted

by shouts across sills or the mayhem

below of ragmen and pickle sellers.

 

Grandmother's world.

Life bargained over cabbages.

The rows of pike and smelt

like still life on melting ice, cold-eyed

but rapt in yesterday's news.

 

Chaotic klezmer joy. Bribes and pilpul,

a penny in the pushke for the poor

children of Palestine. Ecstacy

in cardboard soles and the schtetl

remade in a concrete jungle

by landsleit who polished hammered pride

with the promise of a goldeneh medina.

 

And then. Ut azoy!

 

The kinder move to the Bronx,

to Queens, to Short Hills and Far Rockaway.

Yenkees lose accents, drop syllables.

play the letters game: Cohen to Cohn

to Cone because the world always spins

new yarn, knits glory and misery

from the faded quilt of memory,

but the resulting garment is uncomfortable,

ill-worn with passing years, a costume

fit only for ceremony.

Reviews

[Toni Prehoda Kahler]

Your poem is rich with imagry and history - you take me there to the streets, to your grandmother's world, I who have not experienced this, see cabbages, pickles, fish, and "the wash that fluttered brick to brick
like damp trapped birds undaunted" (these lines and images fill me with your amazing sense of rhythm).

You show me loss and what happens to those who drop pieces of themselves for comfort. Yet I understand (vaguely) as my own grandparents changed their Hungarian name - Prihoda - to "Prehoda" to avoid the embarrassing mispronounciations.....but the layers go deeper than names....

I realize through this work that I am ignorant in many ways, but I tune in anyway to what I can glean from the last stanza: I am thrilled at the depth of the world vs tradition images you portray through the metaphor of spun yarn and knit garments becoming uncomfortable "costumes" to the wearers, until they are suitable "only for ceremony". And is it age that brings this wisdom, or something more? I am quite moved by this talented work - I feel as if I have just looked through a family album, with you narrating all the while. I thank you for opening my awareness.

I

[Denny]

You have a gift of writting the city with all the sounds and smells I have never had the chance to take of. This one moves well and I get a great visual.
"knits glory and misery
from the faded quilt of memory,
but the resulting garment is uncomfortable,
ill-worn with passing years, a costume
fit only for ceremony."
Great ending.

[Boris]

Ah, this vivid poem sure brings up those archetypal ancestral memories even for those of us who haven't lived through the times that you describe - it must be that we have these experiences inscribed into our very DNA.

I particularly liked the following passage - there is a great interplay of metaphors in it which evokes quite thought-provoking imagery:

"new yarn, knits glory and misery from the faded quilt of memory, but the resulting garment is uncomfortable, ill-worn with passing years, a costume fit only for ceremony."

[Tara]

Shara, this is really fabulous. I am at a loss to review, having read Toni's wonderful review below. Shall I just cheat and say ditto? Of course, I love the emotional laden imagery and you write of my hometown and of the culture of my family so it resonates for me in a special way. There is such a melancholy sadness here.

[[untitled]]

I'm 55 and spent the 70's and 80's living on the Lower East Side.
I learned to make so many of the foods I enjoyed there and
loved being in some way a part of a rich culture.
I lived in the building the Marx Bros. grew up in.
Does it get any better?
Love, Jack