Passover

Though she was not religious, we ate matzo

for the whole week of Passover, often searching

for hours in our rural neighborhood

for a store that sold matzo, and the store

that sold matzo one year did not always sell it

the next so she always bought more

than we needed, and for the Passover after

her death I had no need buy any more matzo,

but none of her family celebrated Passover,

she was the one who insisted on Passover,

but the family expressed an impatience,

as she prompted the men on procedure

and pronunciation, to get on with it and eat,

and when her niece gave birth to twins and

one twin was stillborn, her niece and

husband crying and confused, she insisted

that they deal with the dead one

he should have a proper burial

with proper Jewish prayers,

so many ancestors had been killed

with no ceremony and no memory

and this one child will be buried

with honor and memory

and the Family did gather to bury the child

and we said prayers for him, and

Kaddish, the Jewish Prayer for the Dead,

which we said for him

and for them

and for us,

and that was the last act

she did for her family

and at the Thanksgiving

following her death

the non Jewish husband of her niece

opined

she will be missed,

but she was cantankerous.

Peter Goodwin

Hard a Lee!

They were uniformly chubby
Never slim, and often tubby
Were those sailors docking at that little port

Serendipitously cheerful
They could fill up quite an earful
As they told their tales (with chuckles and a snort)

Of the meals that they had eaten
Chickens fried and biscuits beaten
Masticated by the bushel and the quart

Of the drinks that they had swallowed
Smorgasbords where they had wallowed
Pausing only to inhale a cherry torte

And digestion reigned quiescent
Never need for effervescent.
Eating was, in fact, the shared collective sport

Dyspepsia so unknown that
the slim and not so slim: the fat
flocked there as if it were a Turkish porte

But though this town was famous
it was also, oddly, nameless
Til a busybody went down to the court

Where the lawyers yakked and clamored
And by their threats they seemed enamored
With the notion of a motion for a tort

Laid against this nameless village
(thus its coffers, surely pillage)
So the citizens, they gathered to abort

This legal bit of doo doo
Thus to wish god speed and adieu
To this problem; when a well fed man named Mort

(Quite the largest of those yeomen.
Also something of a something showman:
Adiposity itself, with visage swart)

Placed his surname in the running
For the naming, thereby stunning
Those embroiled,and future problems neatly thwart

Mort's handle was a kicker
as a name it's been a sticker
for his cogomen was apt and it was short

The Port is Lee, unless objecting
Voices say it’s disrespecting
to the citizens with weight of any sort!

Maggie Creshkoff
5/4 and 5/11/2010 and 5/14/10

Philip

The professor wonders

did she sign his death warrant

when she hired him,

to do the programming

for her research project

the luckiest day of his life, he believed.

seven, oh seven, seventy seven.

He was gorgeous, he was blond

with long fine hair always in his eyes,

with a beautiful slow smile, and

so tall he had to do splits

so they could look eye to eye,

a student from Australia, who could now stay

in America, a brilliant mathematician

and a creative musician who turned

his computer into an orchestra.

With the job he got a green card,

and at night enjoyed the excitement

of New York’s musical scene, hanging

out with the famous and the dangerous.

The programming he did for her

he did with such sophistication

she could not always follow his approach

but admired its elegance

and had but one complaint

he was always late,

yet they continued working together

for years, she fussing and fussing

to get it done, he smiling and promising

but she could never stay angry with him

for he did his work with brilliance

and he was gorgeous, his mind as rigorous

as his face was sweet, and she loved him

but was hard on him, and at one dueling meeting

she noticed he looked paler than usual

and his finger nails looked blue,

deathly blue, and that was the last time

they spoke for he died very quickly,

from a fever they said

but she knew its cause

and his lover the famous composer

whose music she never liked

she now disliked with a passion.

Peter Goodwin