Tag: Hanukkah

Ode to a Crystal Dreidel by Liz Marlow

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Ode to a Crystal Dreidel

Throughout the year,
you wait
in the curio cabinet—
sunlight’s fingers

grab at you
through the window
every afternoon.
We adore you

from behind glass doors,
your blue viscera
held tight like leaves
trapped in ice.

But today,
my son watches
you in wonder
like a great miracle.

You spin
from delicate fingers,
maple seed in the game.
How you land

determines win or loss
instead of anchor
to become life.
O how your confetti glows,

fills the room
as the chandelier
catches, presents us
with what you are

meant to be,
with what you have
waited all year
to become.

*

Liz Marlow is the author of They Become Stars (Slapering Hol Press 2020) and The Ground Never Lets Go, forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2026. Additionally, her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best Small Fictions, The Greensboro Review, The Idaho Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the editor-in-chief of Minyan Magazine.

Eight Nights by Emily Winakur

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Eight Nights

First my mother’s mother’s house: overstuffed
blintzes, gifts; my father’s admonitions;
cousins breaking up the distance. Night two,
his parents. Latkes and the news, darkness
amidst festival. The middle evenings
swung less to extremes: small gifts, smaller guilt.
Irony of shellfish fried in oil,
if they were off and we traveled coastward.
Moderation left in place the pattern’s
fundamentals, though: she knew from joy,
he from sorrow. Each year, each settled in
more rigidly. Each eighth night, the candles
spent themselves in one moment. My parents
kindled such illusions of agreement.

*

Emily Winakur is a writer and practicing psychologist based in Houston. Her poetry and prose have appeared or are upcoming in several journals, including, most recently, Literary Mama, Colorado Review, The Texas Observer, and The American Scholar. Emily has recently completed a coming-of-age novel that describes a teen’s journey with both mental health and poetry.

My wet eyes stared into their lights by Roseanne Freed

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My wet eyes stared into their lights

During our family FaceTime call
at Chanukah last year,
we lit the fifth day candles
on the menorah,
and my seven-year-old granddaughter,
the image of her late mother,
asked us,

            Who misses Mama the most?

I’ve spent the whole year wondering
how to answer.

At a Shabbat dinner on Friday night
when the woman opposite me said,
Where are your children?
I could tell her my son lives in Canada.
But I don’t know where my daughter
is — she didn’t leave a forwarding address
when she left.

*

Roseanne Freed grew up in apartheid South Africa and now lives in Los Angeles, where she takes inner-city school children hiking in the Santa Monica mountains. A Best of the Net and a Pushcart nominee, her poems have appeared in ONE ART, MacQueens Quinterly, Naugatuck River Review, and Blue Heron Review among others.

Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel by Howie Good

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Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel

After 30 minutes of Christmas music, the high school choir broke into the Hanukkah song “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” at the holiday concert. The person seated beside me began to complain under her breath. Jesus Fucking Christ! I thought. I examined her out of the corner of my eye. She wasn’t an obvious Nazi. Somewhere in her fifties, she was trying hard to look younger, a frosted blonde with the sharp features of the obsessive dieter. I didn’t say anything, though I might have let out a sigh. The song changed to something Christmassy. I focused on my daughter up on stage. She was heedlessly singing, her face all alight.

*

Howie Good’s latest poetry books are The Horse Were Beautiful, available from Grey Book Press, and Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems from Redhawk Publications.

To Light the Whole of the World by Dick Westheimer

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To Light the Whole of the World

Tonight we set
the menorah
in the window
facing the world.

I light the first candle
which flickers feebly
against the whole of darkness.
I look from the flame

and see reflected
in the glass
my hand holding
the glowing shamash,

the helper that will light
two candles tomorrow.

*

Dick Westheimer has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years. His most recent poems have appeared or are upcoming in Rattle, Paterson Review, Whale Road Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, and Cutthroat. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, poems prompted by Russia’s War on Ukraine, is forthcoming from Sheila Na Gig Books.
Website: dickwestheimer.com