Souvenir

In Kraków’s marketplace, the kiosks vend
carved men at thirty zlotys each: a Jew
who grips the Torah in his wooden hands,
a beggar Jew, a bobble-headed Jew
whose body sways and nods with just a pull
against his jagged nose, a singing Jew,
a Jew who spills gold coins onto a scale,
the balance tipping in his favor. These Jews
will be wrapped up and taken home to stand
on cluttered shelves. Children will clench the Jews,
the zydki, as their parents say. How pale
their faces are, how dark the beards of Jews,
as black as coal dust covering new snow
(and lost like memory in the dirt below).

© Jehanne Dubrow, Poetry, March 2005