A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
Erev Shabbat, I Become Matriarch
Because days are long and daughters in far off cities
Because times are dire hope slim sleep fitful
we fear our country’s cruelties
we are lonely two Jews
in a house too dark
I pull my grandmother’s crooked candlesticks
from the cupboard set them by the sink
The silver is thin embossed with grape vines
With a white cloth I clean tarnished crevices
With another I buff to bright sheen
I rummage the drawer for tapers
shave and twist them to fit
turn the tilting and bent silver bases
so the grape-roped pedestals
are as even as they will get
At sunset I ignite wicks stand and
beckon light with open palms
What I have been awkward with I need
My mother is long dead
No one complains that we
say sabbath prayers in language
more rhythm and blood than commitment
I do not bake but buy challah
Jewish husband and I tear into
there is no wine
and yet briefly
we are blessed and
enter briefly rest
Barbara Rockman
Barbara Rockman is the author of Sting and Nest (Sunstone Press, 2011), winner of the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and to cleave (University of New Mexico Press, 2019), winner of the National Press Women Book Prize and a finalist for the International Book Award. Her poems are published in Calyx, Thrush, Bellingham Review, Hobart, and Split Rock Review. She has received the Baskerville Publishers Prize, the MacGuffin Poets Hunt Prize, Southwest Writers Poetry Prize and the New Mexico Discovery Award.
