Michelle Taransky
ESTHER FRIEDMAN
There is always someone
Whose job it should be
To advise you, even if you don’t want to know:
No girl dreams of being proposed to
With a ring from the Shoah
Look to your mother
She cares so much it hurts
If you don’t want to have to describe
To your lover how
You want to be loved
Read old letters grandma
Never sent from Germany
Because she couldn’t
Write—But somehow planned
To go to Hotel Shangri-La
Wearing a magen david, the family
Tallit and wrapping tefillin
Despite her gender
It is insane, not sweet
To recite “America” by Allen Ginsberg
Then. There the head cannot know
Where the protractor has disappeared
Please bring your oldest
Calculator to help me answer
ANN LANDERS
Michelle Taransky teaches Critical and Creative writing at Penn where she was awarded the 2014-15 Beltran Family Teaching Award. Taransky is the author of the poetry collections Sorry Was in the Woods (Omnidawn 2013) and Barn Burned, Then (Omnidawn 2009), winner of the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize selected by Marjorie Welish.
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #10.
