Zum Zum
The hot chocolate sipped at Schrafft’s the nickel’s worth of mac and cheese at the automat the bygone watering holes that only linger in the adipose tissue My working life coincided with the launch of a wurst purveyor with kraut or not and mustards, birch beer and, upon tap, hell und dunkel Found about Manhattan, one Zum Zum was niched in the concourse of the then Pan Am Building A steady traffic of business-types came to be served by dirndl-clad waitresses in the blond wood setting on the appealing pewter plates and heavy glass mugs Imbibe the pungent crisp of the grilled wurst skins;...
Read MoreFeatured: Week of June 17 (Family History)
Wild Violet contributors share stories about their families this week: Sean Johnson’s poem, “Grandmother and Al,” shows the changing world of an old woman slipping into senility. Lyn Lifshin’s poem, “Somewhere Near Vilna,” depicts the living conditions that caused her father to emigrate to the U.S. Lyn Lifshin’s poem, “I Think of My Grandfather,” imagines his experiences while traveling to the New World. Lyn Lifshin’s poem, “From the First Weeks in New York, If My Grandfather Could Have Written a...
Read MoreFrom the First Weeks in New York, If My Grandfather Could Have Written a Postcard
if he had the words, the language. If he could spell. If he wasn’t selling pencils but knew how to use them, make the shapes for words he doesn’t know. If he was not weighed down with a pack that made red marks on his shoulder, rubbed the skin that grew pale under layers of wet wool, he might have taken the brown wrapping paper and tried to write three lines in Russian to a mother or aunt he might never see again. But instead, too tired to wash hair smelling of burning leaves he walked thru, maybe he curled in a blue quilt, all he had of the cottage he left that night running past straw...
Read MoreI Think of My Grandfather
on a cramped ship headed toward Ellis Island. Fog, fog horns for a lullaby. The black pines, a frozen pear. Straw roofs on fire. If there were postcards from the sea there might have been a Dear Hannah or Mama, hand colored with salt. I will come and get you. If the branches are green, pick the apples. When I write next, I will have a pack on my back, string and tin. I dream about the snow in the mountains. I never liked it but I dream of you tying a scarf around my hair, your words that white...
Read MoreSomewhere Near Vilna
Past where the train goes where snow mounds in the shape of caves and ovens, my father is holding one hand near an eye, tracing the sun’s rouge light in snow. Later no one will be sure why he can’t see, moves thru shadows with just his left eye. A chicken that will bleed over straw by noon the next day, nests near the foot of the bed his mother made of evergreen and patched wood. Cold spreads like oil or terror. An Aunt talks of the year there was no thaw, her skin cracked, rough as a cat’s tongue, reads to my father in candle light of a country with no snow where, if my father...
Read MoreGrandmother and Al
Once she was the only colored cook behind the counter at Woolworth. Now she heats up empty frying pans, her thoughts so scrambled that they don’t turn over easy. She clings to the scrap quilt my mama gave her. Perhaps it reminds her of time. Once she wore new suits from Joskey’s, chocolate nylon pantyhose, two inch square-toed “chu’ch” heels and hats that reached toward Heaven like the holy hands of the “sistuhs” on her pew. Now she wears urine soaked adult diapers and the green “I lost my mind in Vegas” shirt my cousin gave her last July. Once she captivated young...
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