PRIZE WINNERS OF THE 2008 REUBEN ROSE INTERNATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION 

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ROCHELLE MASS: MARTIN HERSKOVITZ: MICHAEL DICKEL: DIANE GREENBERG: BREINDEL LIEBA KASHER: ADRIAN BOAS: GARY CORBI: JUDIT NIRAN: GERARD SARNAT: JEAN KADMON:
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Note: The italicized poets have won more than one prize- chosen anonymously by the Judge, Richard Berengarten (aka Burns)

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To find each poet, highlight the poet, then use your computer search function (usually "ctrl f" without  the apostrophes).
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FIRST PRIZE: ROCHELLE MASS ISRAEL

I often think there's a woman on the hill

over there, who looks out her kitchen window

in my direction

as she prepares dinner for her family.

Perhaps that woman has watched our village grow.

Perhaps she's seen it spread over the Gilboa

new homes built for young families

children playing in the yard.

I watch Jenin stretch so wide

I have to turn my head

each way

to see the full size of it.

Perhaps that woman is picking olives, as I am

soaking them in large bins then

slicing lemons, adding coarse salt

tossing in bay leaves, peppercorns and

sharp red peppers to get the right flavor. 

Perhaps she helps her husband, as I help mine

take their crop to the local press, return

with gallons of oil.

I watch evening stagger over Jenin as

I soap my dishes

see lights splash

over the city.

I wonder if that woman

is looking my way –

I would ask if she's angry

if she's afraid.

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Names

My mother's father was named Mordechai Kleinbart

but maybe, because he was the eldest son,

his mother called him Tateleh.

And his father probably called him Mordkhe,

like my father calls me.

His sister and brothers called him, perhaps, Mori,

except for the baby sister who called him Momo,

even after she grew up.

His wife's cousins at the winery may have called him Kleiny.

And his children certainly called him Tati,

as did his wife.

Except late at night, alone in the bedroom,

she would call to him with Yiddish familiars

in a soft erotic lilt.

Or maybe not

Because since Auschwitz, Mordechai Kleinbart is the single name I have,

so it alone is engraved in stone and molded in bronze.

All the other names exist only in memories long interred,

or on pages yet unwritten.

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Oasis

The nights with you are wondrous, the days a joy.

Your sacred presence in my life unfolds me; I grow as a young tree to the sun.

Come dance with me among the trees, naked in the orchard.

Come lay with me under the stars, as one in the desert.

The spring brings forth sweet water, cool from the depths of you.

I drink deeply, refreshed, returning again and again for more.

The roots of the sapling hold to the earth and follow the source of the spring

as the branches reach high into the air and light. Taste my dates, for they are sweet.

My leaves offer shade from the summer heat; your well provides life to us.

Let us raise our tents here, let us hold tight to each other. Let us live in each other’s arms.

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Where’s my home?

the man asks his wife

of 65 years

Is this where I live?

You’ve been away for some time

she answers softly

This is your home now

What is this place? he asks

This is where you live now

she touches his hand

Whose things are these?

Your tallis, tefillin

the kipah your father gave you

Why do I need them?

You are a man she says to her husband

a Jewish man

Sometimes they take me and those things to another place

to the shule to pray with other men she tells him

I should stay here he says lowering his head

When they need another man they come for you

she says

Why me? he asks, his hands shake

Because a man is a man

that’s the Jewish way

she explains

I’m no longer a man

he says

to his wife

The man in Room 57 was a distinguished scholar

and teacher of Jewish thought.

Now he wanders from chair to chair

touches books he doesn’t open

waits for his wife to tell him who he is.

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I Cannot Plant

I cannot plant today

just dig and poke the clover.

I do not brush off the mud

stuck to my boots

tomorrow there will be more

when we bury Asher.

After the heavy rain

I kneel and crouch near

the earth and pull up weeds

- their roots white and young.

Sometimes they emerge whole

from the wet soil

but most times they break off

in my fingers at the surface

and I am left holding half-sentences.

Unspoken words cling

to the stony puddles

and are gone.

In memory of Asher Green

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Natan The Gabbai

Warsaw,

Another cloudy day.

Police patrol the synagogue where

Swastikas are smeared, with red paint,

On the brick wall

Where Natan, the Gabbai, stands,

In a blue suit, and a black hat,

Answering the same old questions

As a matter of fact.

"How many Jews here,"

The tourists ask?

"Do you get a minyan?"

In broken English, numbers fall

From his lips, down to the floor,

Where he waits, like a pigeon,

In some forgotten park,

For a few crumbs.

"Take," the tourist says,

"Five dollars!"

"How about ten," Natan asks,

"One for each man?"

When we speak Yiddish, he bends

"Mine Yiddishe Kindt,

How is the life In Israel?

I would come but what would be?

Do you have a sweet young vibele for me?'

"NO MORE JEWS HERE," he whispers

"NO MORE JEWS!

As in a Dream I see a Grave That is Not There

bar Yochai and his son take off the only garments they own each day,

to preserve them, then bury themselves in sand and study.

For twelve years, sleeping in a cave like animals,

but coming out in front each day, in the sun, up

to their necks in sand, eating carob, drinking water,

they study. Then a vision comes to tell them that the emperor

died, the decree ended, the sands ran their course

through the hour glass. Here, then, bar Yochai now rests, turning

to dust, to sand, beneath this stone, in this desert,

on this mountain; he in this grave tucked into cool rock.

He studies. Above him, a carob grows, below,

water flows.

The mikvah ha’Ari briskly refreshes a pilgrim.

With the dust of the day washed off in the cold spring water

and so many graves before me, so many to come after,

I wish that I could pull out of the accumulated sand

and study. For twelve hours, twelve days,

twelve years, I would never learn the lesson

that emperors die, decrees turn to dust,

that if I take off my garment

and lay naked in the passing time,

something incredible might come of it.

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4 women

spread avocado

mixed with

horseradish and

tabasco

over chunks of bread with

sesame seeds round the edge.

One has a husband

with a cane,

colostomy and

a knee replacement,

who sleeps most of the day

and little of the night.

One had a husband

who left her as

the children left for

marriage

college

India.

One threw out her

husband. She's got

an Arab now

who won't leave his wife

but brings chickens

and apples from

the Galilee,

love

in the mornings.

One writes letters to a man

she doesn't know,

waits for proof that

she was heard.

4 women

spread avocado

mixed with

horseradish

and tabasco

over chunks of bread with

sesame seeds

round the edge.

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A Photograph by Frédéric Brenner

four old men from Saloniki

each holds out a numbered arm

their faces formidable as stone

the frame cannot contain them

three wear defiance like a shield

but the fourth dissolves the others

I see him alone

everything lost in the caverns of his eyes

hand against his face his grief

has become entirely mine

drags me into the interminable

sorrow in every fold

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Ein gedi

A fine mist drifts sideways

coating my face

small strays from the fall's spray

not meant to feed

the thin web of blooming surrounding the springs.

Date palms march in unbroken formation to the falls.

Bearded watchmen, curved horns for helmets

Peer from sheer cliffs above

guarding this haunt of the rare and the hunted

a refuge against the spare desert's sway.

We met the same day

your smile seeping within

a reviving spring never beyond recall.

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Letter to Firoozeh

(I wrote this poem when I received the news that my dear friend, a young woman from Teheran died of brain tumor.)

I walk on the edge of days that know not how to die,

on the rope stretched between laughter and tears,

the memory of your eye is the despair of my heart,

we are the mirrors of each other's unknown.

When one is far one goes on believing

that it did not happen,

on my street the women weep and the madman howls

as if it were just another day,

my steps resonate a thousand sounds of helpless longing,

in this glamour of sorrow it is too late to tell you

how we laughed at the wrinkles on our aging faces

when on the night of your dying I dreamt of life.

The dawn is jealous of the hope of my night,

the dream turns: you are with me in a garden,

we embrace, weep, and are happy,

I remember how much we laughed together, and

wonder why, though we knew it all, wept so rarely

in the routine of our lives, our errands, our friendship.

You are the diary of my pains,

the black of your eye is the unknown of my heart,

do you allow me to embrace you, to hold the air, the nothing,

the splinters of memories and laughter.

I collapse under the jewelry of hope and acceptance,

blue-green heaven above and chasm below,

I fall and fall and fall into the sparkling night,

into the memory of a conversation:

we speak of death, our fears greet one another in our eyes,

and our years spin themselves back to childhood

when life was eternal.

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The Patriarch

"At eighteen, I armed myself with Father's hunting knife.

Lopped off long black curls for crew cut.

Got serious.

Took blood revenge on his killer.

Became the man of the family.

Traded in childhood dress for Daddy's baggy pants.

Ruled with an iron fist the next six decades.

That is the Albanian way."

Such was said in a bellowing voice.

Eyes sparkled.

Legs swaggered wide open.

Pink flip-flops dangled.

Relished downing shots of Raki.

Smoked cigarettes with fellow townsmen

while the wives — valued at half a man for five hundred years,

stayed home to clean, cook, iron.

Thus is Pashe Keqi's life,

one of forty remaining sworn virgins

(each worth twelve oxen)

who took an oath of celibacy,

forsook marriage, sacrificed kids and sex

for the trappings of male authority

in return for the right to preside

over her clan.

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Jerusalem Autumn

(During the Year Of Pinatubo's Eruption)

for Robert Friend

it was not the style

of his generation

to capture sunset places

but the spread out sky

over desert deeps,

and the windowed rocky hillsides

seeped through what he was.

"I have never written of

beauty directly"

he reminded himself

but his pen began

and the city

on its holy, lofty perch,

became aura in the flaming dust.

(Robert Friend, for many years, taught English poetry in the Hebrew University

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Bee

His head shapes a brown heart, his thorax

Is fuzzed with transparent down

In the touch of sun, a silver stole

To hide the cogs that work his wings.

Bands on his extremity end in a malevolent cap.

Thorax and abdomen are held together

With a minute hinge that enables him

To hug a flower and bend his upper part in.

The light through his stomach is pale gold.

His wings cut curves from cellophane,

His movement, not erratic like that of a fly,

Is slow, purposeful; he has work to do.

He alights, holding on with fixed legs,

Peers down the secret cavern and sends

His proboscis deep to draw the liquid treasure,

Gold fuel to run his assiduous vessel.

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