Fragment 14 from a Nonexistent Yiddish Poet

← v7n1, Spring 2008

Ida Lewin (1906–1938)

AlwaysWinter, Poland

If beets complain, they say,

the root of me is blood.

Although you wish me pale

potato-white

or weeping onion-tears,

I cannot hide my heart

despite

a pointed tip that jabs

the earth.

I end in sprays of green.

I’m salad days.

Why not look past

my roughened skin,

the dirt I’m buried in?

Peel me.

I take your spice.

My neighbors stand a pinch

of salt but little else,

their thousand eyes

held shut against the world

I have no eyes to keep

you out. Squeezed dry

then tossed into a heap,

I’m vegetable

with rot.

It’s mine, this sacrifice

that stains your knife.

I gleam as hemorrhage

inside your hunger-dreams.

folklore body identity

Jehanne Dubrow

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of two books of nonfiction, most recently Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022); nine poetry collections, most recently Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021); and a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Poetry , New England Review , Colorado Review , The Southern Review , and Blackbird , among others. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas. Photo by Cedric Terrell