A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
Self-Portrait as Half-Jew Celebrating Hanukkah
o loneliness in the throat like water
that won’t go down, how I choked
when I sat alone with the matches, how
that terror began to shift a soft white
the color of smoke when the pope is finally
chosen o pope in your jeweled gown I felt
the room shiver I imagined the dark eyes
of my forebears like an asterism that had
swallowed me as I lit the menorah alone
in the dark house the hours trembling with
desire for someone to fill the space with
their hands guiding the flicker to flame
o paraffin you taste of December nights alone
in the cold house with rafters tall as a church
Meghan Sterling
Meghan Sterling’s work is published or forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, The Colorado Review, Rhino Poetry, Meridian, Hunger Mountain, and many others. Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize) came out in 2023. You can read her work at meghansterling.com.
