Blackbird Archive
← v7n1, Spring 2008
Poetry · Volume 7, Number 1

Fragment 26 from a Nonexistent Yiddish Poet

Jehanne Dubrow

                                              Ida Lewin (1906–1938)

AlwaysWinter, Poland

I have swaddled the baby

in a blanket—wrapped

                       like a cabbage roll,

she’s warm, as though from baking,

her breath sweet cinnamon

and raisins, her voice

            the burble of a meal

that’s close to done

                       —I would eat her,

hold her again in the dark oven

of my belly,

where the air is tangible with heat.

There, she could not catch a chill

nor a fever that burns

       all juices from her mouth,

her skin turned wax paper,

her body charred

but cold inside its layers, unmoving

and untouchable as death

familygriefwarmortality
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