Fragment 12 from a Nonexistent Yiddish Poet

                                             Ida Lewin (1906–1938)

AlwaysWinter, Poland

I want to be studied, the way

my husband drags a fingertip

from right to left across

his siddur,

 black letters fluttering

like eyelashes against

the softest flesh—let him be

a scholar and I the text, speak me

on Yom Kippur

while the congregation bows

and sways, voices praying me,

myself the blessing when they pour

the wine myself

the motsi said before a meal,

           let the rebbe teach the right

pronunciation for myself,

let there be a midrash to the mole

that punctuates my breast,

a hermeneutics of the scar

so pale across my palm,

still legible

             though the kitchen blade

inscribed me twenty years ago,

   let my husband read what men,

the wisest men in the village,

have written on my name, my face,

the vellum of my skin