Uncle Joe

You always smelled likelimburger cheese and slibovitz.I remember how you held your nosebetween two fingersand blew it into the streethow you slurped your borshtstraight from the bowlhow you said with a Polish accent“Vot a vunderful tuchus she has.”A refined man you Read more ›

The View from the Needle

If prayers could animatethe matchstick armsthat dangle by your side,I’d compose a dozen dailyand post them on the old-growthcedars in Olympiawhich shoot straight up to Heaven.It’s been three years since you feltthe numbness in your handsand your illness is stilla Read more ›

assimilation

Roberta, née Rawa in Iraq, weary of explaining to the salesgirls in cosmetics her reasons for wearing a hijab, decided to let her lustrous hair flow down and no longer cringed when her  husband’s friends, emboldened by cocktails, gave her Read more ›