Fragments from a Nonexistent Yiddish Poet

Ida Lewin (1906-1938)
AlwaysWinter, Poland

41.

Last night my pillow broke
into a thousand feathers.
My mouth give birth to wings
          but crippled ones,
as if a child had struck
a white stork from the sky,
his slingshot made for killing
what is only beautiful beyond
our gravity           our pull.
He left the bird for dead
beneath my tongue.   I felt
the needle of its beak,
its pinions gray as fever,
its claws        unholy thorns.

42.

The outside world is treyf
and, therefore, beautiful
for all I cannot eat of it.
          two words that taste
forbidden in my mouth:
devouring and satiate.
Some landscapes that I want
to try: a distant valley
curving like a cloven hoof,
the oystered clammish sea,
                  the cities where
one language bleeds into
the next, where crowds
are winged and swarming things,
and every touch
is the idolatry of wine.

-Jehanne Dubrow

Jehanne Dubrow’s work has appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, and Shenandoah. She is the author of a chapbook, The Promised Bride (Finishing Line Press). Her first full-length collection won the 2007 Three Candles Press First Book Prize.