Tag: Lisa Badner

Two Poems by Lisa Badner

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Spoiled Milk

My son reminds me that I once
poured him a glass of turned milk.

He likes to bring it up when I try to give him advice,
“like the milk?” he’ll say.

He is now nineteen and this happened a long time ago –
only one time! I protest.

I adopted him when he was two. Brought him
to this place where now

they are rounding up and deporting brown people.
This place, where he must carry his passport,

where I beg him to please stay out of trouble.
I have brought him to this rotten place.

*

Jewish Not Jewish

My son tells me he’s not Jewish.
His blood is not Jewish,

his skin is brown –
not Jewish brown.

I dipped him in a mikvah –
a beit din of Rabbis made it so.

He was called to the Torah.
We had a nice lunch,

with food and some hora
I try to convince him, he’s part

of the people. But this people,
has disappointed him

over and over. Othered him.
How selfish that I want him

to be part of this bundle
of argumentative contradictions.

This torn up confused beleaguered people.
Doesn’t he have enough to deal with?

*

Lisa Badner is the author of the poetry collection, FRUIT CAKE (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Lisa’s writing has appeared in a bunch of publications: biggish ones and smallish ones and most recently in Second Coming Poem-a-Day Series and Unbroken#48. Lisa has received two Pushcart Special Mentions. Lisa lives in Brooklyn, NY. See lisabadner.com for more.

VIDDUI by Lisa Badner

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

VIDDUI

I never heard my father utter “god”
except in rote Hebrew prayers.

Yeshiva of Flatbush bred – he insisted on two sets of dishes
two cutleries, kosher meat.

My mother – a German Jew, obliged.
Sneaking me out for crispy bacon on Saturdays

while dad went to shul. But at home
we went through the motions.

For a while, I even recited the shema before going to sleep,
kneeling at the bed, like the Christian kids on TV –

I said the words –
Eventually, being in the kosher baking business, my father

fed up by the scamming koshering rabbis –
stopped caring about kosher meat (so expensive!);

The cutlery and dishes in their house got mixed up
and dad only went to Shul on the high holidays.

When he was dying, I arranged for a Rabbi
to visit him – laminated viddui prayer in hand –

hoping to bring some kind of comfort, to him
or maybe to me. To be enveloped

in that end-of-life blanket that only belief can bring.
Come on dad, I implored,

but he waved them away.
And I sat alone with him at the end

watching his body actively dying,
with nowhere to go.

*

Lisa Badner’s debut poetry collection, FRUIT CAKE, was published in 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Lisa’s writing has appeared in Rattle, the New Ohio Review, The Satirist, PANK, Fourteen Hills, Unbroken, The Fruit Slice, the Mid-Atlantic Review, among others, and forthcoming in Pine Hills Review. Lisa has been nominated for a Pushcart and made once it to “special mention.” Lisa lives in Brooklyn. See https://lisabadner.com/ for more.