My grandpa Ruby and Grandma Molly were both Ukrainian Jews. Ukraine was part of Imperial Russia then, so they were also Russian Jews. Molly’s family was from the Odesa area. Ruby’s family was from near the Polish border. Russian Jews had no rights. They couldn’t live anywhere except in the Pale of Jewish Settlement and they couldn’t own property. Employment and education were severely restricted. They had to be back in the shtetl (Jewish settlement) by sundown. And then there were the massacres and lynchings and rapes (pogroms). These were the Jew laws of Russia. Unsurprisingly, people ran. Became refugees. Leaving the Shtetl is about being a refugee: Afghan or Guatemalan, Rohingya or Jew, Hmong or Somali or Ukrainian.
Make Jazz Not War!
I was a tatter.
I knitted lace.
Where is my lace?
Gone
my wedding veil
gone
the pillow cases
gone
the cradle cover.
Gone.
I was a tatter.
Where is my needle?
Where is my shuttle?
They were nothing special,
but they fit in my hands
in some way
that became more and more knit
with every knot
the metal melding into my skin
the shafts moving more surely
more swiftly
as beauty came ever more easily.
My tools.
Gone.
I am a tatter.
Without my tools
my knots come undone.
I lose my definition.
The chain does not link.
My threads shred and fray
and I could blow away.
I feel
blown away.
I left.
Stitches disappeared.
Knots dissolved.
I had to leave.
The core thread could not be found.
I am blown away.
My health?
I have no health.
Where are my needles?
Where is the picture of my mother?
Where is my father’s lamp?
Where are my pots and pans?
Where is my will?
Where are my knives?
Where is my lace?
They have burnt my life.
I have nothing.
I have said good-bye.
My health.