Bialystok Impasse

- Lois Barr

I.  I awaken from a nap in schul

 “Alyssa has twinned”

the rabbi says,“

with Anya Planik

from Bialystok who never

had a bat mitzvah.

At ten she was taken by train

to die

at Auschwitz.” 

I would go to Bialystok

I think

To know what the

grit tastes like

under my nails

if I made a mud pie.

To shiver with cold in a dingy outhouse.

Are there still outhouses?

To taste Bialystoker

tea

and float down

a chilly river

on a hot summer day.

Is there a river?

To wander crooked

streets and get lost

to hear Bialystoker

Polish all around me

on market days.

If there is still a market.

To look for small signs of Yiddish

any marker

to say my

bubby’s family

lived here once.

To see the

kind of light they

saw in early morning

to smell herring in oak barrels

and smoked pork sausage.

II.  I walk on the treadmill

“My family was from Bialystok,”

I tell Marek, a man from the Centre Club.

“What was their name?”“

Kagan.”

He wrinkles his eyebrows, “Not a Polish name.”

“Jewish.” I say.

“There used to be some Jews in Bialystok,”

he says as I walk on the treadmill

and he sweats away on the transport.

“Yeah,” I say, “Over fifty thousand.”

He smiles and increases the resistance.

I won’t ever go to Bialystok.

Won’t ever know

what Yiddish sounded like

on Bialystoker tongues.

Eat a warm Bialy

or freshly churned butter

on a potato just pulled from the earth.

III.  I gather flowers

I pick a margaritkale

and pluck its petals

I go

I stay

I go

I stay

I go

I stay

Go!

Stay!

Daisies without petals

---graves without covers.

I have to go.

Lois Barr has published books and articles about Latin American Jewish Literature. Her stories and poems have appeared in East on Central, Love

After 70 (Wising Up Press), 94 Creations and the Daily Palette website of the Iowa Review.  She teaches Spanish at Lake Forest College in Illinois.