The Suitcase, by Valerie Bacharach

Travel Light, by Arlene Shechet (USA). Contemporary. Click image for artist site.

 
The Suitcase
            
The grandmother of my grandmother 
dredges mud from the bottom of the pond.  A silvered arc of moon 

hides behind clouds blown by the mouth God.  The grass
shrieks hurry as she lurches home. The mud, heavy in a bucket, 

stinks of decay.  Pogroms thunder across the land, 
search for thin bones of Jewish men, the unwilling flesh 

of Jewish girls. Her mother and brother dead, 
father vanished, only her younger sister left.

The grandmother of my grandmother  
kneels before a cold hearth, chants ancient words of miracles,

sculpts mud into a suitcase. Stuffs it with her mother’s candlesticks, 
a few coins, her sister’s doll, their tattered clothes, 

gathers remnants of food to share--
turnips, bruised apples, bread so old it’s become stone.

Quickly, quickly she snaps to her sister, while it is still cold, 
before the rains, before the mud softens, melts. Before footprints

mark a trail, before belongings spill beneath birches, 
before they are found by the roar of hunters.

The voices of her dead moan songs of warning.
Angels flit, drench the air with half-formed prayers.

Valerie Bacharach

Valerie Bacharach’s poetry has appeared in publications including Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh Quarterly, US 1 Worksheets, The Tishman Review, Topology Magazine, Poetica, The Ekphrastic Review, and Voices from the Attic.  She is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic workshops. Her first chapbook, Fireweed, was published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Carlow University.