Poem: How to Make a Jewish Marriage 1949

Beware the grinding fist, the blanched knuckle, the outstretched hand.
Beware the man who takes any girl’s face between his hands.

The laughing man — greet him with your entire self. Take him
patiently, but take him: his want makes an open, flattened hand.

Ride his wishes to his parlor; ride his hopes to your hopes.
Ride in the driver’s seat when he’s away. Grip the wheel in your white-gloved hands.

Wash your hair, watch your waist, scrub your limbs and creases clean each night. No one should know what you’ve touched just by looking at your hands.

Amnesiac, you become American. Historian, you remain a Jew. Your story begins: the book open like supplicant palms. Strike your words with an exacting hand.

Rachel Mennies is the author of “The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards” (Texas Tech University Press, 2014), winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry. She teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and is a member of AGNI’s editorial staff.