How I Got My Yiddish Name

I was named by love and custom for the dead mother

of my mother; she had no choice.  Called me Feiga,

transliterated FAYGA, hard G; to make such a decision

alone would have frightened her, but it was written that I,

a female child, would bear my dead grandmother’s name.

There seems a certain cruelty in such an edict—

each time she spoke my name aloud, her early orphanhood

would scorch her tongue, and I, deaf to that wrenching

until I was grown, also had to bear her sorrow, the harsh

sound she  sought to soften  by stretching it a bit, adding

what is called a diminutive—Feigele—the word means

little bird--the extra letters drawing out the voice—

the trail it makes on rising, as if yearning, invisible as sound,

can be gently pitched to reach from here to heaven.

-Florence Weinberger

Florence Wienberger is the author of three published collections of poetry,The Invisible Telling Its Shape (Fithian Press,1997) and Breathing Like a Jew (Chicory Blue Press, 1997), and Carnal Fragrance, (Red Hen Press, 2004), and the forthcoming Sacred Graffiti, to be published by Tebot Bach.  Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her  poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Another Chicago Magazine, Antietam Review, The Comstock Review, The Pedestal, Solo, Rattle and Spillway, and anthologies such as Family Reunion: Poems About Parenting Grown Children, So Luminous the Wildflowers, Images From the Holocaust, and Lifecycles: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life.