Tag: Poetry

Childhood, Parenting, Philosophy, Poetry

In this world, there is a fragile child

Jen

There is a cry lodged
There at the farthest most upper reaches
There at the roof of my mouth.

There, its origin may be found in between
There in between an exhale and an inhale
There where an ujjiyai breath washes over it.

There is not a wet cry
There lies a very ancient dry cry
There where it’s drier than a long suckled Japanese well.

There is nothing to do
There but notice how stuck
There to the roof is a cry.

There must be a way to dislodge such a cry from
There so I may be free from the horrors
There seem to be inhabiting the world of all children.

There in Nigeria
There in Syria
There in Hannaton

There once was a girl
There still is a boy
There are children who stick to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter choking me so that the word guttural rhymes with suffering rhymes with flutter in my chest rhymes with a man muttering

“do you want a ride?”

There is nothing to do
There but notice how stuck
There to the roof of my throat is

There really no place for my child
There or here  for my inner child?
There is only a lodged cry

There where
There should be
There could be flowing wet breath.

Mindfulness, Parenting, Relationships, Writing

The wail

Jen

As the two-minute siren commemorating Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day for the fallen) began its descent, a poem began to rise.

Please take a few minutes to travel over to the Times of Israel, where it’s posted.

the half mast flag on hannaton

Books, Childhood, Kibbutz, Memory

Give me your tired your poor your books

Jen

It’s no secret I love old books.

I cry over them like they’re wounded, abandoned puppies crouching behind a garbage bin in the rain.

Sometimes I rescue them, but then have no use for them. (Again, like puppies.)

Often there’s a story behind the compulsion to save them.

I’ll save any Little House on the Prairie book I see, simply because I lost my original set of them in a flood. (For the same reason, I’m drawn to Choose Your Own Adventure.)

I’ll save many an illustrated children’s book from the 1960s because the art makes me want to shake my hips in a way I don’t know how.

I’ll save a book inscribed to Marty or to Catherine. Especially if it was inscribed before I was born.

I’ll save, on the rare occasion I find one, a COUPLES or a SISTERS or anything by Christopher Pike with the express intent to read them with my daughter when she’s 12.

I like old books.

I like to imagine the shelves they once sat in, the boats they traveled by, the author, the editor, the sweat poured into their being.

Which is why, when I discovered in the kibbutz giveaway pile a year ago a Scholastic Book of Poetry edited by Ann McGovern, I snatched it up and placed it on the saved books shelf on the top floor of my house.

It was a triple threat, quadruple even, the 1960s publication of a Scholastic book club book with its retro cover, with its pages filled with poems by ee cummings and Langston Hughes and Maxine Kumin and Basho, and peppered with adorable little one-color illustrations. For the cherry on top, there was editor Ann McGovern: a goddess of children’s books and someone I remember from my days as a young assistant at Scholastic. (What I didn’t know until after I completed the project below is that serendipitously McGovern also enjoys creating collage art.)

I’ve been meaning for some time to take a book from my saved collection and turn it into something new. So it serves a purpose other than collecting dust on the shelf. I got the idea after visiting a gallery in Jaffa last year. Passing a wall of framed art, I noticed one was simply a circa 1950s Dick and Jane book cover torn out, framed, and priced at 200 shekels. After I got over my shock that someone tore off a vintage book cover, put it in a frame, and priced it at 200 shekels, I realized, “Wait a minute. I just might buy that. I am someone who would buy something like that.” And if I would, others (with a lot more money to spend) would, too.

I didn’t decide then and there to start my own recycled books-as-art business, but I filed away the idea of it. I liked the prospect of saving old books from doom and turning them into new art. Thinking about it made me happy.

I’ve always loved creating collages. Looking back at old pictures of my childhood bedroom recently reminded me of this. Why not create collages with the old books I’ve saved?

Today, I dug in and created my first.

The process, I learned, is an art in and of itself. It was impromptu and yet fluid. I didn’t know exactly where I was going when I started, but when I went to the old books shelf and saw the Book of Poetry this morning, I knew that was the book to start with.

And so I sat in front of the patio door where the sun shines in brightest, and I read Frost and ripped.

Poetry Collage by Jen Maidenberg
Poetry Collage by Jen Maidenberg

 

I positioned Edna St. Vincent Millay and pasted her next to Paul Bunyan.

I made sure, too, Ann McGovern still got credit and that bits and pieces of the lovely retro cover remained.

And the result makes me happy. Like a rescued puppy brought in from the rain.

 

 

 

Love, Mindfulness, Parenting, Writing

I Can’t Be Trusted

Jen

Don’t believe a word of it.
Not a letter.
Not even a space or a hard return.
None of it is to be trusted nor considered true.
At best, one or two or ten of my words will last longer than the quart of 1% cow’s milk shoved into a crusty corner of my ornery fridge.
I repeat; my song is sung in tune for the length of a long exhale.
After that, it’s expired.

I am hungry and so I hate food.
I am full and so the peach tree growing in my front yard is a gift.
I am tired and so I wish my children away from me.
I am rested and so my children are the suns and moons and stars and fairy dust of my existence.
I am needy and so my husband is my rock.
I am complete and so I want to run away.
I am pretty and so I strut the city streets.
I am old and so I hide in a darkened room behind the pages of a paperback.
I am smart and so I shout all my wisdom and thrust forward my chest.
I am a fool and so I cry the tears of someone who wasted her life away.
I am loved and so I write a poem.
I am lost and so I write a poem.

Uncategorized

123 days

Jen

There are 123 days left until 40.

1 – 2 – 3

and like that I will be

Over the Hill.

Which hill?

The hill there

footsteps away?

The Tel?

Tell me.

Tel Hannaton through fence, by Jen Maidenberg
Tel Hannaton through fence, by Jen Maidenberg

It’s a curious time.

This tick tocking of clock

measured quietly

uncertain

alone

without labels I’ve grown accustomed to

a “Jean Val Jean” moment in time, says my husband.

“Who am I?”

1-2-3 and I will be 40.

Over the Hill.

Not Under it.

A blessing

Not dead becomes a blessing when

1-2-3

one is 40.

Remember when dead was unimaginable, unthinkable?

When youth was a fortress of solitude with its fangs sunk into the taut skin of our necks?

Sure, there was always AIDS hanging over our upper middle class halos.

And a little bit of cancer.

But now there is cancer

of everything.

It ate away at the fangs of youth — replaced them

Sunk into Breast. Stomach. Skin.

Now, there is the echo of anomaly

Brain. Lung. Ovary.

“What’s that?”

A tag. A growth. A lump.

1-2-3 and you become

Much too aware.

Too much care taken in the shower

soaping up lathering up the sides of once-breasts

Too much care taken in the reflection

smoothing sprouting silver down

Too much care taken in front of a lens

facing right, facing left, facing the side with less shadows.

Filter me.

1 – 2 -3 until 40.

Over Under but what about

On the Other Side

Kibbutz House by Jen Maidenberg
Kibbutz House by Jen Maidenberg

I hold out hope

that walking through the door of 40

is like opening the front door of the Gale farm

after a wicked storm.

1-2-3

technicolor works its magic

and life becomes more richly lived

in never before seen hues of

yellow green and blue.

* * *

 

Like my filtered photographs of Israel? Follow me on instagram for more. 

 

 

 

 

 

Books, Culture

Between us, there are books

Jen

It’s not difficult to spot us.

Those of us in love with old books.

We have shelves full of them.

We smuggle them into our homes despite the eye rolling of our spouses, our parents, our roommates.

We tolerate repetitive sneezing due to dust and the mildew and the ancient tree pollen lurking beneath pages 204 and 205 of the worn book of poetry; for the last time it was opened was beneath an olive tree in the rain.

We can be spotted inside libraries caressing the faded red jacket cover of a 1930s edition of Alice in Wonderland, both in awe that this edition is in our hands and moved by the many hands it has passed through.

Hands now wrinkled, hands now dead and buried, hands that have held wonders of their own in the years since they last held Alice’s.

old edition of Alice

We weep at inscriptions:

To John, Love Grandma

To my beloved wife on our 5th wedding anniversary

To the 8th grade graduates of Merrick Long Island Hebrew Academy. Mazel Tov!

We rescue old books from the recycling plant or, worse yet, from the dump.

We hold on to them in case of the apocalypse or hand them over to crafty friends to offer them a secondhand chance at life as a kitschy framed work of art for sale on etsy or as an IPAD cover, a final project for graphic design school.

Sometimes you hear us sighing in a used book store.

Sometimes we get lost in a used bookstore.

Sometimes we get caught longing for a used book store. Someone asks us, “What were you thinking about just then?” And we answer, “I was looking at your canvas tote bag from The Strand and wishing I was there right now.”

Truth be told: If I could be anywhere right now, I would be inside a used book store.

I would be sneezing my brains out. I would desperately need to use the bathroom (book stores have done this to me since I was 7.) I would lose track of time and part with lots of money, but this is where I would choose to be on any given day.

Even on a beach day.

I suppose TV had a hand in this, what with Charmed and Buffy and farther back even still, Friday the 13th The Series.

I suppose that movies had a hand in this, what with The Neverending Story and The Ninth Gate.

I suppose books themselves have had a hand in this, too. By becoming old. By becoming rare. By becoming obsolete in a way. By carrying in their spines the secrets of a thousand and one human beings.

I don’t know why, exactly, I have such a strong affection for old books, but I imagine it’s wrapped in my curious regard for the passing of time.

It’s a way to touch the past.

It’s a way to relate to people who I will never have the chance to speak to or behold.

It’s time travel of a sort. It is. Stop saying it isn’t.

Old books make me weep for the people who once read them.

For the person who will read it after me. Whom, I hope, might weep for me, too.

Might remember me, the ghost of me … with fondness.

For, despite the space and time between us, we both once turned this book over; swiped the top corner with a damp pointer finger; placed it spread open wide on a night stand or flat sandwiching a clean white tissue inside.

Times passes. We pass.

But between us, there are books.

 

 

 

 

Modern Life, Parenting, Relationships

Husband Envy

Jen

It’s not the first time I daydreamed I was

Nicole Krauss, authoress

all-around good

woman good Jewish but not so Jewish

writer I could aspire towards

and as a matter of curiosity

exactly one day

(perhaps only hours!)

older than I.

But today most of all

when I learned husband

Jonathan

Safran

Foer

(even his name sounds groovy out loud with line breaks forcing teeth against my lips)

cuts up old books to make

new books

Fresh! Magical!

I thought I couldn’t stand to

be me another day

I just want to be Nicole Krauss

just to be married to a man

who thinks up cutting up

old books to make new ones

who writes books called

Extremely Loud

Incredibly Close

and then writes a book

about not Eating Animals

because sometimes he

doesn’t eat them

out of kindness or conviction

and then – to top it all off with an all-natural maraschino cherry –

lives in Park Slope and wears

smart but sexy glasses.

I imagine him sitting there

next to her

at a wooden desk in their house in Brooklyn

(the desk was his

found at an antiques shop in New Paltz)

separating their two laptops is an

antique robin blue typewriter

maybe even with Hebrew letters like

the one I drooled over but

didn’t haggle over

(4000 shekels!)

in the artist’s colony in the Golan Heights.

There is an imposed silence every week day

in Chez Safran Foer Krauss

from 8 am to 12:45 for

Writing Time.

They write and write and write

while sipping organic espresso

a matter that is serious to both of them

but they’re considering giving up

because of stomachaches.

On Wednesdays they listen to

Van Morrison for inspiration.

On Fridays he makes her a spinach and goat cheese omelette

and takes out the recyclables

and this is their life

I imagine

unless one of their kids is sick –

then she is downstairs

on the couch watching

Phineas and Ferb and

gritting her teeth in

frustrated agony

the way writers who are also

mothers grit their teeth.

She considers calling the nanny

but she won’t while he is upstairs cutting up

old books

to make new books

new stories.

She’ll wait.

Or that’s what I’d do.

Wait and wait and wait

and grit teeth

until Wednesday when the fever breaks

and she takes

her laptop

to the café down the corner

and stays there

til the sun goes down

til closing time

so he can sing the kids to sleep

and she can see if her Wikipedia page

is longer than his or

for once write a novel on the napkins

like she’s wanted to for

the last three years

and glue them together

with Juicy Fruit gum.

Fresh! Magical!

Sometimes, she writes

in her journal

how she wishes the internet would break

so she could start over

and find the wooden desk

in New Paltz first.

Or marry a carpenter.

And this is when

I understand why

she is keeping her name

and writing poetry again

and practicing the Law of Attraction

on the door to the cafe

daydreaming it’s a portal

to that kibbutz she volunteered on

in the summer of 1990-something

a kibbutz in the Lower Galilee

a lemon tree in the front yard

that looks remarkably

like the one I see

through my bathroom window.

Childhood, Food, Memory, Parenting

I remember you on white bread

Jen

Meatball Surprise Mom is away.

Not like that one time fancy schmancy mozzarella with tomatoes from BJs unusual but usually some concoction something on the stove from scratch from what was in the fridge

No I remember Meatball Surprise little Jason little Jen

Pancakes log cabin syrup big glasses tinted lens steaming up with fog

laughing rather snorting rather smiling rather some blend

a beer on the back porch only when Uncle Steve’s in town only once a year maybe every other year

rootbeer or Pepsi Free from the fridge from the door in the fridge no don’t remember on the island there on Garwood Drive next to a plate of egg noodles with cottage cheese and sour cream and Wonder Bread and that was being Jewish I think

lunch on Saturday after cartoons after you went to the market but before soccer or after i don’t know there in the middle when it was sunny on the deck

Not like Wednesday when it was 5:30 and you were making green salad green iceberg lettuce green cucumbers green peppers Italian dressing French from scratch one time that didn’t work was yucky was too red not yellow or orange enough on the island

hamburgers on the grill but never cheeseburgers never with cheese not with Kraft American cheese in plastic never ever even though that’s what mom wanted and me too probably because hamburgers with bubbles on the top are gross

never parmesean on meatballs not like at Bubbi’s house not because it wasn’t kosher like you said but because you didn’t like the smell put the green container back in the spice cabinet now almost yelling but not

Flounder

But never shrimp

Never ever coconut shrimp except that one time at a chinese restaurant but i wasn’t there that’s just a story I think mom could tell or Uncle Harvey and Aunt Iris but not me I wasn’t there when your throat almost closed up but for years i didn’t eat shrimp God Forbid

Not because it wasn’t kosher

Fake poop but that’s for another time

Food food food this time that’s where we’re going

Never would’ve guessed it but it’s there on the top of a birthday cake 66 candles

but 39 years of food

funny i would’ve said beach boys beatles singing in the car bad smells bad jokes roll the window down the top down but no there’s

fried matzoh

syrup or salt or jelly perhaps, too, Grape Welch’s the flavor of 6 7 8 9 10

Passover

Pesach

Sandwiches on white bread

but what was in the middle

Yellow mustard for sure

but also what

Turkey? Bologna? Not ham, never ham

The only ham was you

on stage

with a frying pan.

* * *

Meatball Surprise Recipe

Ingredients

  • Egg Noodles
  • Ground Meat
  • Red Sauce from a Jar (Preferably Ragu)
  • Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Instructions

Cook it all up regular like and mix it together in a pan and eat it up

Childhood, Love, Memory, Parenting, Relationships, Writing

They grow slowly

Jen

Spotted

My left eye spotted you

thanks to the light

that shines only in the first half of the morning.

Over the neighbor’s roof and down through

the dust

onto the purple chair

painted last summer by your father

in the light

of that same ray.

This is how they grow.

First one at a time, with pomp —

Then stealthily

like suburban mushrooms,

only noticed after the fact

by one who travels close to the ground.

And only in light that shines

in the first half of the morning.

Spotted

My left eye spotted you.

oliver freckles march 2014

Family, Love, Parenting, Relationships

The lump in my throat called life

Jen

The first sensation

is a swell

in the space

behind the back of my tongue but before my

esophagus.

What is that space called?

High up

on the other side of gagging?

I call it my crying space.

The space tears come from.

Ha!

You thought crying started scientifically in some space

known as

ducts,

No way, Jose.

Crying starts as a lump —

there in that undefined on the anatomical map because it’s function is almost obsolete

like the appendix.

Except it functions still.

I know it because I try to make it stop sometimes and it won’t.

Good cries

Bad cries

Nervous anxious I don’t want to talk to you right now cries

How could this happen I don’t understand it cries

My baby’s okay my baby’s ok my baby’s o.k. cries

And you …

you little one little new one little brand new life that just began first as an idea then as a mister mister then as a real live thing in the world as a lump in my throat cries.

You started in someone else’s belly but for me you start now as a lump in my throat trickling up through that space between my esophagus and the back of my tongue.

I breathe in relief and gratitude and respect for your mother.

(I also sigh a long sigh called MOTHERHOOD because this is what all mothers silently sigh the minute a new baby is born and all our collective memories swirl together in an almost scream.)

But then I stop.

You are you. Something new.

The lump, I swallowed it.

You are in my stomach now. In the space I hold allllllllll my love. All my love is there. So much. Too much. Old love. New love. If I could keep it all there I would but I can’t and it turns into lumps sometimes. But what’s there in my belly, all that love, keeps me alive and going and facing forward.

Love. New love.

New life.

You.

Childhood, Writing

I don’t know why I’ve been dreaming ’bout the Echelon Mall

Jen

Tacos for 79 cents,
mild sauce ask for extra and squeeze

Children’s Place, a tunnel with carpet inside
crawl through the storefront window

My first Walkman wasn’t Sony
downstairs at a stereo store in the corner next to Strawbridge’s across from Heroes World
before Heroes World moved upstairs
One time
downstairs

I saw a man there
the inside of his ear on the outside
But that was when it was
still cool because it wasn’t cool
Smelly erasers
Sanrio
I stole one and my mom made me give it back

say sorry to a lady who maybe once stole stuff too.

White tiles – big
Black tiles- small
Step on a crack, break my mother’s

back by the Clinique counter.
Pantyhose (stockings) downstairs, down an escalator
watch your shoelaces, “tie them!”

Sbarros a booth and the back of a perm seen from
the old Gap which was new once jeans only then V-neck sweaters

Seasonal in and outs up near JC Penney’s or Sears, the anchors I never explored ’cause someone said they were for poor people

Broken glass my dad ate inside a Chinese stir fry at a restaurant that once lived near the top of the escalator over the Food Court
but that was before
Bananaberry shakes
gyros
Mr. Bulky’s
Giggling at boys
Skater boys
Yummy blonde skater boys named Jon P with bangs hanging over one eye
never paid attention to me ’cause my bangs were too crunchy or my nose too big or the scrunchy socks before hair scrunchies or was too Jewish or too rich
even though I never thought I was rich
just had nice clothes and got to go on vacation
back when my parents were married still.

CVS
Silver City Pink
painted on like cum on my 13 year old lips before trying to get in to see Down & Out In Beverly Hills and then again to see House which wasn’t as scary couldn’t have been with the guy from Greatest American Hero

I have his autograph

had. Rated R
Rocky Horror Picture Show sometime later after the Sophmore Cotillion Josh made me sit on the end and I was scared of the transvestite.

Bighair
Bigbighair

Cookie cake – so many cookie cakes
Sam Goody’s 2 for 99 cents bin
Teeny tiny chicklets in a yellow envelope damp at the top with my saliva

Loitering
Once we were kicked out for loitering
Me and Dylan and maybe Sondra or Meghan, I don’t remember but what a dumb cop to think good girls knew how to loiter
We weren’t even hiding the Benson & Hedges cigarettes in our pockets that day.
Passing by girls who used to sleep over my house in my double bed with me next to me after softball but now hardly say Hi to me pretend they were never there.
Giggling
Those girls do
Laughing at a fat kid because Michael P. with his feathered black hair said to and because that’s what you do when you travel in packs

at the mall
McDonald’s a book store Hallmark that T-shirt place that awesome iron-on T-shirt place where you could choose cute critters or Papagalo’s Pizza logo or Adam Ant what was it called up there above Woolworth’s where I used to buy tye dye with Rachel so we could make t-shirts and sell them on my street where cars passed by because it was a busy street not a quiet court like hers
One time I got lost
— or was that Jason?
One time my mom hid from me, from us, to teach us a lesson
One time I saw Brian there and he winked at me and I felt pretty and popular and was certain that my life was about to change
One time I dared to go into Spencer’s
One time I got my ears pierced at Piercing Pagoda in front of everybody, why did they do that? in front of everybody?
One time I went back there and it wasn’t there anymore
Not even the piano store where they used to give lessons and play Liberace reminds me of Bubbi and Poppop always because I took organ lessons there for a week or two or maybe a month but not long enough to know how to play the piano or the organ or any instrument that would allow me to make music  ( I just want to make music)
Not even Structure or Express, nothing
not even one whiff of anything that once smelled like Drakkar Noir

Just some of the walls were left
And a Lens Crafters

and a Lens Crafters

Childhood, Family, Love, Memory, Writing

Blogger challenge: My ideal hours would be …

Jen

Sitting on the carpet combing tracks down your long brown hair with a blue-handled brush —

Sitting on the carpet across from your wrinkled hands shuffling cards for a game of Gin —

Sitting on the carpet with my knees tucked inside my nightgown, mouth cartoon-like forming the words,

“Tell ’em Large Marge sent ya.”

Little you giggling —

Sitting on the carpet by the sliding glass door where the morning sun warms me like a cat napping.

You there, reading the Wednesday paper on Sunday, butt up in the air. You there, coming in from the market with bunches of brown paper bags, no handles, filled with Pepsi Free and Herr’s potato chips.

You. You. You.

*

Lying in bed on the top bunk in a wood cabin in Maine, you pushing my mattress up with your feet.

Lying in bed in the dark before midnight, phone between my pillow and my ear, you strumming the opening chords to “I Will.”

Lying in bed next to you watching Clueless, high on the Percoset you crushed into my black tea with honey —

Lying in bed just after the kids fall asleep, but just before I’m too tired to talk about my day … and yours.

You there, looking over at me, wondering what to do next. You there, proposing a back rub.

You. You. You.

*

You, your back to me, dancing drunk to Blues Traveler.

You, your back to me, roller blading down F Street.

You, your back to me, stir frying chicken strips in Teriyaki sauce, Billie Holiday singing “What A Little Moonlight Can Do.”

You, your back to me, on the beach behind Dolphinarium, music too fast for slow dancing.

You there.

*

You on your belly, too old anymore for Playmobil, for running over Roman soldiers with a Greek chariot —

You in the winter sun, face painted like an 18th century whore, dancing with ten other five year olds to “Gangnam Style.”

You leaning down, button nose towards the purple poppy, sniffing it the same way your father did when I fell in love with him.

You, head of curls on my lap, breathing with ease once again. You there, scent like shampoo.

You there. You. You. You.

= = = =

This post is in response to a Blogger Challenge proposed by friend Kronfusion. For more posts on #idealhours, check out the hashtag on Twitter.