Yiddishkeit
Kim Roberts
I want the guttural, the “ch” sound
at the back of my throat, half swallow
and half spitball. I want cross-talk,
kibitzing across a burdened table,
chastising. I want pish-pish, head
bobbing. I don’t know from pages
of Torah, all those tongues
in one mouth. But talk overlapping, waves
brash and ghetto-haunted, yes—
to heimish arguments, interruptions
punching the air for punctuation,
gossip as censure, censure as praise.
So, nu—the words rise to strain the rafters,
high drama, schmaltz, tsuris,
the whole edgewise megillah.
Don’t woo the evil eye:
give me the turn-around-three-times.
I crave meshuggeneh. I want all the curses.
Kim Roberts is the author of six books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (WordTech Editions, 2023). Roberts edited By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book to represent Washington, DC in the Route 1 Reads program. She is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). Roberts co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June with filmmaker Jon Gann. http://www.kimroberts.org
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