A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
To the Performer
If you want the music
to touch listeners,
picture your grandfather
among them:
Monday night's House Doctor
at the Metropolitan Opera,
Toscanini’s physician,
who declared one time,
in an offhand sort of way,
you played the cello well.
Let him sit by your grandson,
as he often does
when you perform.
And in that parallel universe
scientists seek, where fifty years
between when one life ended
and the other began, have been erased,
your grandfather
will take your grandson's hand.
Dusk
The children play with toy boats
in their bath, unaware
their ancestors escaped by sea
allowing them to sit in this white enamel tub,
imagining voyages of their own.
When it's time, I'll take all four
to Berlin. Where Stolpersteine,
emblazoned with the names
of Jews deported or killed, stand
watch in front of stolen homes.
Where the brass shines
on the New Synagogue at dusk,
lighting up Berlin's dark sky.
But for now, I'll let them be,
children of innocent slumber,
of harmless tantrums,
still learning somersaults,
the rhythm of their breathing
and their hearts
quick, like other small mammals.
Elizabeth J. Coleman
Elizabeth J. Coleman is the editor of Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). She is the author of two poetry collections published by Spuyten Duyvil Press (Proof and The Fifth Generation) and translated the sonnet collection Pythagore, Amoureux into French (Folded Word Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Colorado Review, Rattle, and Bellevue Literary Review, and in several anthologies. She has also written two chapbooks. Elizabeth received an MFA from Vermont College of Arts in 2012 after a career as a public interest attorney. She is a teacher of mindfulness as well.
