Mediculosis

Mediculosis

Please

do not try 

to sell me pills

for a condition

I don't even know.

Please

do not usurp

my well being

to package

and then

offer back

insured

and deductabled.

Please

do not 

pretend

that growing older

is 

a condition

to be bartered

for smiles so sweet

they stink

of acidulosis.

Please

do not 

label yourselves

the cure

when you 

have become 

the illness.

The 10 Commandments and Shavuos

The 10 Commandments and Shavuos
(According to Mel Brooks,
15, but one tablet broke.)


The great granddaughter
of the Muscover Rebbe
could tell you
what the holiday Shavuos meant
and why
she didn't believe in it.
"God wrote and spoke
Hebrew?"she said.
"Or any other languages?"

I would add
that belief systems
adduced a god-voice
when they wanted
to own power
and point up truths:
outpourings of culture,
campfire legends.

My grandma would grimace,
then turn cheese blintzes
in the pan.
"This is my truth," she would say.
"We eat dairy on Shavuos."
The blintzes were crisp outside,
melting inside.
In my grandma's kitchen
was the land of milk and honey.

This was my truth.

I wanted no other.

Proud Roads

Proud Roads


I would have liked
to live your life
of the past 25 years -
seeking, being
in the Goddess.

You wouldn't have wished mine -
looking in byways
for words,
acceptance
of bodies.

When our paths diverged,
we argued.
Yet I see now
that they were set
before us,
more than marble,
different lights.

You stand proud before me
in your purple robes,
seeing many worlds.
I sit near you,
breaking up one
and writing it whole again.


When I see you,
I honor the priestess.
When you see me,
do you honor
the word?

Quiet Poem (After Life)

Quiet Poem (After Life)


The house still rings
with silence.


I talk to myself much more
now.
I repeat the names
of household things
and forget
where I put clothes.
When the wind comes,
it knows sound
better than I do.

When I walk outside,
birds squeal their alarm.

If I relearn a social self
it will be
beyond the bounds
of what talk
is supposed to ease.

No Warning To Her Flight

No Warning To Her Flight



How much fun,
to introduce
two of us
with the same name.

We stayed friends
for five years,
then lost touch,
went separate ways.

Found out recently
that we both wrote
science fiction,
albeit different kinds.
How cool is that?

You'd play
"April, Come She Will."

September, I remember..
You showed me where Paul Simon lived -
about a mile from us.
You didn't like Phil Ochs' voice.

You wore your acne
like a badge of honor.

You never liked
the way I dressed
or my taste in boys.

You won the Spanish medal
and the Girls' League Award
and went on to a girls' college.
I danced on the roof
of a science building
in the rain.

When streams were ripe

and swelled with rain,
your companion of many years
died in 2005.

No google entries for you after,
but you're still listed
in San Francisco.

If I knocked on your door,
would you invite me in?
Would you nod me out?

"August, die she must.
The autumn winds
blow chilly and cold."

I never did thank you
for "The Trees They Do Grow High."

A Blessing for My Departed Mom on Mother's Day

A Blessing for My Departed Mom on Mother's Day

Frannie Zellman



Come sit with us, mom.
I made noodle kugel.
Couldn't make it before
because I'd start to cry.
See, the noodles, sour cream,
eggs and raisins
browned in just the right ratio,
and the top is crunchy.
You can have the inside part,
though; it's easier
on your teeth.
I'll warm the chicken
and the sweet and sour stewed
cabbage.

There!
We cleared the seats.
Take the one near the back.
You don't have to get up.
I'll bring you your tea.
The picture of the tiger cub
is back on the wall now.
Dad found the source
of the leak
and fixed it.
Yes, it's pretty quiet
but I will visit
your voice
and play it back.
We will set a special cup
for you
as if you were Elijah,
and I will
open the door.

Join us
again
in a hush
and shiver of air
just the other side
that settles
like the finest sun dust
on the walls.

Flow into all
the small lines
of the tablecloth
and the not as clean floor
and find us happy
in secret

not knowing why.

To My Mother on Beltane and May Day

To My Mother on Beltane and May Day



Your tree
blossoms late.
Always worries me,
but the buds
are finally leafing.

I remember
how you argued
with dad
and my brother
that it was a tree,
not a weed,
and how,
come the next spring,
it agreed with you
and put forth
long leaves
and curls of white flowers.

I remember
how birds
used to chupper
when you came outside
as if to greet
a family member.

When you could still sit,
when it was still warm,
you'd sit back
and close your eyes
and we'd pluck
in memory
every place you'd sat
that pleased by sounds
or smells
or seeing.

Death leaves
a hole
in soul or essence
or overbeing
that scabs over with time
but remains
stabbable
when the winds blow
from a certain place
or when someone
or something
conjures,
and the named one
hangs there
like a hint of her scent
or a blessing
in ghost numbers.

But outside
in early spring
the world,
like the scab,
bleeds beings
and drips flowers
into bloom
and small stupid things
that beckon
in their unthought play.

Your fire
surely transcends
something as menial
and undefined
as Death.
even though
the scab
burns a thousand times
for each time it bleeds.

Missing you
at this time
would be like missing spring
and having to name
a new and unwieldy season.

Not a pagan,
but I still cheer Beltane.
And May Day,
that of the workers on fire
and the pole of the dance.

You are here
with both
and yet you fly
above either.
here in the green
of first things
and the sky
over all at last.

How it finds you,
how I see and feel you
becomes nought
as you continue,
like the late blooming,
to be.

Blessings
in all beliefs
promise reunion.

I will take hope
and pretend to fly
toward you
if the day approves.