Her rounded writing stands upright
in faded ink: date bars, lemon squares,
flower garden cake,
genteel food for bringing over
to the Anglicans’ church bazaar
or the Catholics’ piano recital.
The cards nod discreetly to an indebtedness:
Sponge Cake (Bessie),
Dessert Cake – Bernice Engel,
Ann’s Banana Bread.
My grandmother went to England in the Great War,
nursed in the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade.
Back home,
at the canasta games,
women’s auxiliary lunches,
she sat at the head of long tables,
poured tea and water into translucent china,
a pot in each hand,
revealed her to be a true member
of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire.
What I want are the muscular immigrant foods,
the military-perfect squares of dough
that only my grandfather was privileged to cut,
in victory over his swollen, locked joints.
From his command post at the flour-strewn table,
He’d criticize the seasoning,
oversee how the filling was placed
precisely in each center,
the dumplings crimped,
fried, boiled, devoured.
My tongue longs for the soft cylinders
that slide from marrow bones,
fished from the cauldron of thick beans and barley
and spread on challah bread that my mother gave me.
I want to breathe sweet onions,
seared golden in schmaltz
to anoint the fat-veined, purple-red brisket,
cushioned by lima beans, carrots,
potatoes, garlic, ginger, paprika, pepper,
sealed in its black pot on Friday,
ready for the village baker’s oven,
and carried home for Shabbos dinner after shul.
The cholent surrenders its secrets
through the shtetl streets,
fragrance of diaspora floats to me,
mother tongue I have only begun to learn.
