Welcome to National Poetry Month, 2016! We’re celebrating all month long. Each day we will bring you a poem we love–a selection from one of our published or forthcoming collections.
Today’s featured poet is Marcela Sulak, author of Immigrant and Decency.
Ecclesiastes
Katamon, Jerusalem
It’s so nice to be pretty and wearing polka dots
on a swinging dress with a small cinched waist
pushing a blue-eyed child through
the trade winds in her pram. The trees
are swaying, and on the bench below them
an old woman looks up through the boughs
to a parcel of clouds; when she sees us she smiles.
When we pass she stands up and begins with her
zlata moje, my golden child, and she reaches to
touch our cheeks, and her hand stays outstretched,
and she’s asking for just a little of our gold, something
for the bus or for lunch or, I reach into my tiny purse,
drop some coins, since her hand is now the meter
that turns us in our slot.
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Marcela Sulak is the author of the Black Lawrence Press titles Decency (2015) and Immigrant (2010). She’s co-edited the 2015 Rose Metal title, Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid literary Genres, and has translated four collections of poetry from Czech, Hebrew and French. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.