Katamon, Jerusalem
It’s so nice to be pretty and wearing polka dots
on a swinging dress with a small cinched waist
pushing a blue-eyed child through
the trade winds in her pram. The trees
are swaying, and on the bench below them
an old woman looks up through the boughs
to a parcel of clouds; when she sees us she smiles.
When we pass she stands up and begins with her
zlata moje, my golden child, and she reaches to
touch our cheeks, and her hand stays outstretched,
and she’s asking for just a little of our gold, something
for the bus or for lunch or, I reach into my tiny purse,
drop some coins, since her hand is now the meter
that turns us in our slot.
Previously published in The Minnesota Review and reprinted in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry.
Marcela Sulak, author of “Immigrant,” has translated three collections of poetry from Hapsburg Bohemia and the Congo, and is co-editing “Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of Eight Hybrid Literary Genres.” She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.
