By: Helena Lipstadt
Speaking to the Dead
Let me not be thief of your story let me paint a still life
of names you stand over and below me I inhale the shimmer
of your breath I will not betray your blame
Perhaps you are resting and I disturb perhaps you are where
I put my father wise and full of sympathy now that he
has crossed over sees how small we are how full of longing
I will not betray your blame the dead need their space
I bow to a world of lost gestures mothers and fathers
of my liquid core I pull you from the acid
burying ground of my mind and plant you my eyes sluice water
to feed you where can I bend gdzie? where can I kneel gdzie?
where can I place this food of stones?
my mother didn’t whistle
but my father did he whistled la donna e mobile
when he wanted us when the day
was going his way she never pursed
her lips for music she bent over a novel
by romain rolland waiting at dusk in the doorway
she gleamed her feral eyes
he raised his voice his glorious eyebrows
we paged through their bodies our baedeker
our world book encyclopedia
well-schooled my brother
and i he scared us with his noise she with
her silence the tryst they made
Not Asking
I never asked you,
what was your father like
Was it because you
cried alone in your bedroom, behind the thin door
Was it because you
flew apart sometimes, tectonic, and I was terrified
Because your heart
was held together matches and tar. I didn’t want to break it
Because you
were protecting me and I was protecting you
Because you
were keeping me from bitter truth, and I really didn’t want to know
Because you
were a mystery I couldn’t solve and one more would be too many
Because I knew, deep,
how much you loved me, and maybe you loved your father that much
Because no matter
how much I loved you, my father, I am mortal and can’t heal the dead
Helena Lipstadt is a Berlin native and lives in Los Angeles and Blue Hill, Maine. Her poems have been featured in Rattling Wall, Sinister Wisdom, basalt,The Midwest Review and elsewhere. Lipstadt is the author of two chapbooks, Leave Me Signs and If My Heart Were A Desert. She has been writer-in-residence at WUJS Arts Project, Arad, Israel and Borderland Foundation, Sejny, Poland. Lipstadt is a member of Women Who Submit and volunteers as a writing mentor at Hollywood High School, Los Angeles, California.