By the Sea


How beautiful it is by the sea, even though 
there is war in the air, even though there is always 

war in the air, which makes people live 
with a vengeance. On the roads fatalities 

exceed those lost in battle.  Children run 
wild—all too soon they will sleep on stones 

in the desert.  In the sky planes fly lower 
than you would think possible, low enough 

to wipe your plate clean.  There's an airport 
less than a mile from the promenade 

and the sea, the beautiful sea, duplicitous
in nature, licking your lips and wrapping 

her salty arms around your neck until you 
succumb to the whirling rapture of the deep 





Furlough


I love to see those tall, lean, muscular men
with their clean-shaven heads and digital

watches toss their kids in the air. And I love
to see them drop, not weightless, but light

as grenades. This is how children learn that fear 
can be fun.  And fathers, that this too is hand

to hand combat.  To cradle or kill—what story  
do we tell ourselves to justify.  That a dunam 

of earth is worth dying for?  That a child opening
his mouth with an o of pleasure overturns

everything?  We grow like onions, our heads
buried in dirt.  And we die like onions, face 

down in a pot of boiling water.  Gravity causes
all to fall down, and love, to hold things up.





Aluminum


My father loved whatever was new—like the aluminum
pan he brought home one night, dangling it by its ring
from his pinky.  "Look how light it is!" he crowed, 
glancing with scorn at the cast iron skillet. He never 
stepped into the kitchen, yet there he was, in a merry mood 
frying up bacon. My sister and I were enchanted, perched 

on red leatherette chairs swinging our legs.  Soon the strips 
pale and pink as the skin under a scab were trembling 
in a pool of grease.  Then my father swirled the pan so 
the bacon wouldn't stick, spilling fat onto the burner, that's 
how light it was, the pan. Flames shot up to the ceiling.   

It stayed black until the painters came.  I don't remember
who cleaned up the mess, only that he didn't lose 
his temper – at me for being a chatterbox, or my sister 
for chewing her braids.  And he didn't hit us, either. Even 
he couldn't blame the pan, only the hand that held it. 





Carvel


In the summer, when the days were light longer, 
we'd pile in the car and drive down Metropolitan
Avenue for soft ice cream at Carvel's. Those nights  
we could have been a regular American family out 
for a spin, whose father maybe tossed a ball 
with his kids, or tousled their hair, or let himself 
be tickled.  But we knew his moods would return, 
when we'd tiptoe around the house, lay low.  This 
was the fifties, there was Korea, but it was far away 
and it wasn't our war and they weren't murdering 
our people. Later I'd learn, but only much later, after 

he was long gone, that he gave our blue Persian carpet 
to Franz Smetana who was broke and could sell it 
for cash. He also gave money to his mother's seven
brothers and sisters, and some got out in time, 
dispersing to Israel,  Australia, South Africa.  Or
the year he paid the bills for the Swiss sanitarium 
my uncle stayed at after the war to put on fat.  These 
kindnesses, these things my father did without thinking 
twice,  what to say about them, about him?  Except 
that how a man treats his own children is only one 
part of the story.  And there are others.  


"By the Sea" and "Furlough" were published in Moment magazine.  "Aluminum" and "Carvel" in Royal Baker’s Daughter, winner of the Felix Pollak Poetry Prize, (University or Wisconsin Press).