Two Poems by Talya Jankovits

Tikkun Olam

Imagine if we bled water,
could quench parched mouths
and barren earth, seal the splintered dirt,
make flowers grow from our insides.

Imagine if we bled air,
could ease dyspnea
open passageways, expand lungs
and fill us with a tomorrow and a tomorrow.

Imagine if we bled diamonds,
could line the ripped seams of empty pockets
make us all crystalized elements of carbon,
endless reflections of each other’s shine.

Imagine if we bled music,
that our organs were an organ,
the bones, pipes, emanating tones
of baritone and pitch, filling our ears with reverence.

Imagine if we bled color,
a runny palette of amaranth, chartreuse
bright, glowing, and mixing, a great big
arch stretching from one end of the earth to the other.

Imagine if we bled words.
Peace. Harmony. Love.
Shalom. Salam. Pax.
Chaver. Sadiq. Amica.

Imagine if we would just stop
making each other bleed.

*

Shofar

She stands in a bath,

my daughter.
Iridescent bubbles shimmer
above the surface of water
which wrap around her small calves.
She holds a shell at her forehead—
small and delicate,
likely formed in a factory
and not in the sandy oceans
of the Pacific or Atlantic.
It is the length of her finger.
It is shaped like one too.
Twisted like a swirled serving of ice cream
but pointed at its tip.
She holds it there in the center of her forehead,
says; I am a unicorn.

She stands in a supermarket

my mother.
She found herself in Fresno, California
after my father confused it for San Francisco.
I thought it was a nickname, he said
when he was accepted into the doctorate program.
They took suitcases of Kosher meat and poultry.
Stocked a freezer full. Rationed it bit by bit in a town
where Jews were like unicorns; mythical creatures.
She gathered cans of tuna,
cheap enough to feed three children.
Tuna burgers.
Tuna casserole.
Tuna a la surprise.
They waited diligently and creatively
for that ration of Kosher meat each Shabbat.
Perhaps she was gathering them –
tin cans of chicken of the sea,
solid white in water,
the aluminum catching artificial light,
glimmering maybe,
shimmering maybe,
when the woman asked to touch them.
Perhaps my mother reached instinctively
to her head, to wonder at the possibility.
Or perhaps she laughed.
Or perhaps she felt fear.
Or maybe she just felt sadness.
But she did not let this woman touch her
or
the Jewish horns she asked to see.

But I reach out,
I touch it,
this shell horn against my daughter’s head,
want to rub it for luck like a Buddha’s belly.

We don’t wear our horns on our heads,
we blow through them
wails heard across centuries of persecution.

Come.
I dare you,
ask to see our horns
and hear our sirens instead.

*

Talya Jankovits is an award-winning writer. She has received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She has been featured in numerous magazines, some of which she has received the Editor’s Choice Award and Honorable Mentions. Her poetry collection, girl woman wife mother, is published by Kelsay Books and received First Place in Contemporary Poetry in the 2024 Bookfest Awards. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters.