MY MAIDEN NAME WAS COHEN by Claire Burch

When in regress with visions of His ways
I all alone beweep my Jewish pride
so it might be that Heaven soon replies
maybe our mentors and the Talmud lied

if Heaven is now with all its small print clauses
we should not sign without a lawyer's okay.
that contract might be full of legal loopholes
that make us cry and make our hair turn gray
before its time. What answer to breath stopping
shrieks of despair about the baby, gone
before he could say sentences, know music.

Yahwah, if you exist, give us a sign
you had the right to take what still was mine.

Al, my father, was also ill treated by Yahwah
Al's trigeminal facial neuralgia
would start around two PM most days of his life.
"How do you feel Daddy?" I'd often say.
Two oclock came early today" he'd sometimes reply.

A Jewish child sits quietly in the back of the drugstore
He'd give us milk sugar capsules to play doctor with
"Your children are so good Doc," his customers would say.

When more is less, with fortune and fruit pies
I all alone can't sleep, remembering grief,
I pick calendulas but to my surprise
learn only stones on Jewish graves are safe.
according to ritual. Why can't we put flowers
like Gentiles do? They say in Rome
do as the Romans do/ Why Yahweh has
these rules is beyond me. Michael Lerner's
magazine Tikkun is full of questions too
Allen Ginsburg's are mine, and frankly none are new.

when intersecting with remembered past
we think of seven tired angels, tossed
to seven storms but landing in the sun
and seven Jewish babies just begun.

As open heart surgery gives us second chances
so this cloud world of arteries and veins
severed so long ago, brings new defenses,

Maybe the year two thousand can start to mend
the shocked black holes of concentration camps
long emptied but still there in temporal lobes.
those iron boot memories not yet resigned
to nightshot nights and failed escape attempts.

children of children of arm branded survivors
though safe in bed, still dream and get the shivers.

When intersecting with remembered yorzheits
I use a cell phone, dial a dour deity
so be it, be in, bee hive. Open city
was closed before we got there. See the death camps
I never knew, took my pale horror struck landsmen
and did the same to them as was done to yours, Jimmy

"the ball I threw while playing in the park
has not yet reached the ground"
that Fall we felt like crying in the dark
but never made a sound.
see you around, honey, see you around.

When more is less, with fortune and fruit pies
I all alone can't sleep, remembering grief
I pick six daisies on the bridge of sighs
but only stones on Jewish graves are safe.

Allen Ginsburg's father Louis wrote rhymed poetry
Allen at the end rhymed also though the content
was always more rebel irreverent.

Oh Allen I liked your Kaddish better than the real one
helping me
to give up Purim hamintosh for Lent.

Well we grew up show Jews in an Italian neighborhood
Quiet as synagogue mice my sister and I
huddled in the back of our father's store being good
our father always cheerfully refunding the price of the half used
bottle of perfume and extra strength Exedrin
to prove Jews weren't Shylocks
while we earnestly explained to our classmates at PS 170
that borsht was made from beets, not the blood of christian children

My maiden name was Cohen. There were thousands of us in the Brooklyn telephone directory.

My grandfather would bring his own sandwiches when he came. We weren't kosher enough for him.
twice a year we went down a flight of stairs to the basement synagogue
with the sign that said "please donate what you can to get us off the ground".

My aunts all had muskrat winter coats dyed to look like mink.
v'yis ga dash v'yis ga dal
buray puree hagorfen
sounded like something you'd make in the blender.

still infuriated by Kaddish I weep over episodes of ER
like Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov screaming "How could He
be a benevolent God who kills babies?
If He's benevolent He's not all powerful,
if He's all powerful He's not benevolent.
Hating Him for His acts of violence. Hating the Bible

Last Yom Kippur my mother said she had nothing to atone for
I have hatred of God, my worst sin.
raging, awake at three in the morning, running to the kitchen for bread and butter, my best tranquilizer.
Sleepless in Berkeley, furious at the words of Kaddish
when at the moment of loss we're supposed to praise His name.
Only comfort in fixed form. Back to a sonnet.
Robert Lowell went bananas
even sonnets couldn't save him. Can they save me?

Climbing Mount Hebron
but left my boots behind
climbing some new Masada
afraid of what I'll find.

Days of wrath some primrose path
life scribbled like a kosher grocery list
reform pina colada
or ortho lox twice blessed.
Yahwah You broke Your promise
saying Father knows best.

scaling Annapurna
my jacket torn and stained
some memory Jerusalem of the mind.

du wop and bo peep sleepytime sleep
walk on the waters walk on the dead sea
Talmud and Torah
and baby makes three.
in World War Two before United Nations
we took a break and opened
some leftover K rations.
(please close remembered window

sadness too much to bear
skinny Jewish babies
piled in a cattle car.

open hearted sorrow swing on a broken branch
the victims were childhood sweethearts
he met her at a dance.
Hear the harmonic minor may I have the honor?
(the weary ghosts of Linz)



Light a Yorzeit candle at some warm family Shabbat
my maiden name was Cohen the candle wouldn't stay lit.

Exodus seems forever the ship arrives on time
the bus pulls into safety we took the right plane

snow blankets the Black Forest Normandy sands of time
huddled in the Ardennes peeing in the rain
I've been waiting for you in some grey danger zone
for at the gates of Trouble is all that's known

the minute stays for always as the grey times fade
wave to the scared survivors on that Coney Island ride
(it's time to live in present tense
some disappearing act my best defense.)

mystery unsolved. In World War Two they'd say
bullet had your number yesterday
what they meant was pretty clear
father,mother, son and daughter
sweeties I'll be there.

Mirror mirror on the past
to make amends we need the list
terror terror on the wall
warning this century of the unsent mail.

the tooth of crime is how it could have been
but I didn't take that ride
or march in that parade.

still Waiting for Lefty lost in a rent strike dream
(things aren't ever what they seem)
the Forties say on a Genocide day end of game.
I'm smiling at you but it's still Code Blue still the same.


If the earth washes down to the flooded levee
keep it light not heavy forged passport,savvy?
keep it high blood pressure and Uncle Louie
time is no crime Yahweh knows best
Grandma the same make me a list

noodle kugel and daffy down dilly
secular secular holy holy
don't quote me I'm saying it off the cuff
full speed ahead ok? enough.