Freedom: Winners of the Chronicle’s poetry contest | The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle – thejewishchronicle.net

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle thanks all those who submitted poems to its third poetry contest. Once again, our judge was Yehoshua November.Yehoshua November is the author of two poetry collections, Gods Optimism (a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) and Two Worlds Exist (a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize). His work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, and on National Public Radio and On Beings Poetry Unbound podcast program. Here is a link to one of his poems analyzed on a recent episode of On Being.

Three winners were selected: Freedom by Cathleen Cohen; Immigrant by Daniel Shapiro; and The only word you need by a.e. dickter.Poets were asked to write on the theme of freedom. In addition to their poems being published below, each winning poet will receive a $54 gift card to Pinskers Judaica, courtesy of an anonymous donor for whose generosity we are grateful.

FreedomBy Cathleen Cohen

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This year we lost an oakto illness that withered the grasses,leeched sap from trunks in amber dropsuntil the yard was bleached of green,deep sienna and crimson

like lifeblood. Lantern flies feast,wilt the willow our neighbors plantedwhen their daughter was born.And weve had storms,dark, out of season, changing

how we watch the skyfor signs. All this freedomwas given, choicesin how to live.Is landscape enacting

old stories, old lessonsthat weve forgotten plagues, storming waters,viruses, wars, emerald borersin the ash trees?

Our neighbors wrap willow brancheswith nets and tapeto trap swarming nymphs.So fragile.We rush to help them.ImmigrantBy Daniel Shapiro

When Mae thinks of her homelandit is in the shape of a scarfwrapped around her head. Onceshe believed there was morethan one way to give feet to freedomand hands to dreams. The Old Countryand the Singer sewing machinemade her life tight.Both gone, she wears scarves like dust.

Sam, part-time machinistnever took rail-way passes;A waste no time for pleasure, she saidand walked beside himback into the beet fields.Carving horses for the childrenhe promised more than liceon a fine-tooth comb, the raw earth.

The only child born herebreathed blood. Maewent back to the fieldsburied the child in a black scarf;the milk in her breasts, the unused dreams.Now she nurses the night. Survivorwith shrinking scarves pulled tightunder her chin.

The only word you needBy a.e. dickter

I know one word in Ukrainian

Taught to me by my friends aged motherone eveningwhen I asked her toplease teach me some Ukrainian words,such as please and thank you or hello and good-bye becauseI remembered her homemade pickles and borscht andpierogis and stuffed cabbage andthe black bread spread out in a feast and theywere as good as my Jewish grandmothers

As she waited for placement in a home whereno one knewmy language and no one knewmy religion and she could no longer get tomy church and where she would have ample time toremember the destruction of her villagewhen borders changed and the years as a slavelaborer in Nazi Germany and thedeath of a beloved baby from lack of medicine andthe family left behind and still in Ukraine and thetrip to a new land and learning yet another language andstarting all over again and the factory work and .

she answered with a single word:

/ Svoboda / Freedom

It should have been her birthright

May her memory be for a blessing and maythe word ring out, loudly and speedily, in our day PJC

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Freedom: Winners of the Chronicle's poetry contest | The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle - thejewishchronicle.net