January 2017
Judy Kronenfeld
judy.kronenfeld@ucr.edu
judy.kronenfeld@ucr.edu
A long-ago transplanted New Yorker, I live with my husband in Riverside, California, when we are not visiting children and grandchildren on the East coast or in more far-flung places. Retired from teaching in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, I volunteer for a local literary arts nonprofit, help edit the online magazine, Poemeleon, and write poems, nonfiction and the occasional story — as much or as little as the days invite. My fourth full-length collection of poetry, Bird Flying through the Banquet, is due out from FutureCycle Press in the spring of 2017. For more information, and a selection of my poems and prose, please see http://judykronenfeld.com
Musical Surprise
All through the klezmer concert at
the synagogue, all through the wailing, laughing,
talk-back violin, the clarinet cavorting
and kazatski-ing, and climbing up to cry
from the rooftops, the cymbals shushing and tsk-ing,
the sax keening and weeping its ecstasy
of prayer, my dead father and mother sit down beside me,
and my unmet father’s sister who never escaped
Germany, and my mother’s parents
who died before I was born, and their parents
before that—all of them silently kvetching, kibitzing
groaning, singing, all the way
back.
First published in Poetica (2014)
©2016 Judy Kronenfeld
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