October 2020
Anita Lerek
anita.lerek@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/Poetry-and-Thought-of-Anita-Lerek-492464424841589
Bio Note: I live in Toronto, Canada. I was born in post-war Poland to Holocaust survivors. Over the past 20 years I have sought refuge in poetry from my frenetic professional life. I tend to address weighty topics of the heart and of the world. No surprise, my chapbook is entitled History and Being. I hope to ‘graduate’ to the daily ordinaries as soon as the madness of the world subsides. Maybe soon. I have been published by Persimmon Tree literary magazine, Split This Rock (online), Tikkun (online), and the Canadian Jewish News Literary Supplement in 3 separate issues.

I Wish

I do not see the ordinaries of paying bills, 
renewing services, cleaning the counter, 
brushing teeth. I sketch madly outside
the lines, alive only as long as I revise

After a shower I adjust my positions,
a ferris wheel, a goddess with multiple hands
circling round and round to rehearse
the giving of mercy  
 
I am a wave charging into the dollar store
colliding with immovable forces, aisle to aisle,
until I finally pay and ebb away

I used to feel like a goddess, a gimme goddess
entitled to everything I saw, to all the sun candy,
after a war that boarded up the heavens
and left behind stones for bodies  
 
How I wish I could see my grandmother, how
I wish I could see my grandfather, on either side
of the mountain roads that I rip through
as Hermes, the fastest god, the messenger
who will bring my family back to me

I curl up napkin ancestors. I forget that I wanted
everything. Now I am waves and rocks and
crucified wishes turned to words.

Word Wise

1
Do not judge me by my words‒
just a mosquito repellent 
against invasions from beyond.

2
You and I use the same words. 
But are they the same?  

3
Words are sculptures 
carved into silence‒
to be read from what is unsaid. 

4
The words that stay with us in the end
are our final profile for the hereafter. 
So craft your life accordingly. 

5
Words are a babel of meanings 
that we each have the illusion 
we understand. 

6
Language is a prison that madmen 
and poets attempt to free us from. 

7
Words are wind chimes activated by fear. 
Wind chimes are words transformed into song. 

8
Words are like coffins‒
The boards remain 
while the spirit has flown away. 

9
Words are fatal when taken in large doses.  

10
Words are a headache
that can be relieved by silence. 


11
The act of creation makes words‒
and takes them away.

12
Words cover up nakedness‒
silence reveals it. 

13
Words are mental yoga‒
not a pillar of salt.

14
An exchange of words is a duel 
of identities, and journeys 
through the world‒
a long view is recommended. 

15
Words are a hint‒
not a syringe. 

16
Words elucidate and obfuscate  
the unknown. 

17
Words expand to fill the time
that could otherwise 
be used for action. 

18
Dear wise one, is it possible 
for one word to have two 
or more meanings?

Yes and no.
©2020 Anita Lerek
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF