A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
Pittsburgh Living
Well: another day, another shooting.
Don’t anyone assume it’s a terrorist attack,
the newscast says.
At Passover, we say, “Next year in Jerusalem,”
hoping we'll still be here then.
No word yet on whether it was a hate crime,
although the investigation continues.
We like to joke at every holiday,
“They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat."
More updates on this at 11 o’clock. Up next,
Christmas carolers gear up for a chilly season.
A Pittsburgh shul set aflame,
a bearded man sprawled on a dirty sidewalk,
his shtreimel knocked askew.
Experts believe this may be evidence of a new, disturbing trend.
I skip the post-crime ritual:
social media slogans, our badges of unity.
Police have found in his truck another pipe bomb and
a scrawled note about the Zionists.
Instead, this Sabbath eve: I stare out at the white sunset,
while my sister speaks of wedding plans.
The newscaster concludes,
We can’t say yet just what it means.
Elizabeth Lash
Elizabeth Lash is a Hoboken, New Jersey based writer, lawyer, and podcaster (“Entering the Bar, with Liz Lash”). Her work has been published in Prospectus: A Literary Offering, Write Launch, hMAG, Peekskill Herald, and The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, among others. She was included in Caring for Creation (the St. Andrews 2022 Poetry anthology), long-listed in the 2022 Harbor Review's Jewish Women's Prize, a finalist in the Wrightwood Literary Festival's 2019 Soap Haiku Contest, and a 2018 recipient of the Miriam Chaikin Award for Writing.
