The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.

Fire Cleansing Memory

I had a great grand uncle who I did not know
Just like my father,
And my grandfather
who never met him,
So
Perhaps it’s okay,
It’s even fair,
If it was something
I couldn’t share
With the family I knew.

But I wonder,
And perhaps they did too,
What I might have said
To the great grand man
I did not meet.

I might have asked him
What he thought of the Czar?
And if he traveled did he ever go far,
Far from everything he’d known before
Or, because he was poor,
Did he only know what he didn’t know?

But most of all I’d like to hear
His favorite color,
His favorite meal.
Were we at least somewhat the same?
And, what was his Hebrew name?

Life for my great grand uncle was never fair
Just like my father,
And my grandfather,
But even more
So.
His house was burned down,
He was inside.
But just like me,
The Cossacks did not know him when he died
Either.

Jessie Atkin writes fiction, essays, and plays. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Writing Disorder, Daily Science Fiction, Space and Time Magazine, and elsewhere. Her full-length play, “Generation Pan,” was published by Pioneer Drama. She can be found online at jessieatkin.com

Featured image in this post: Mikhail Clodt Village in the province of Orel, Mikhail Clodt, creative commons via wikimedia commons.