worked,
went to meetings,
rode buses,
shopped,
carried bundles home.
At demonstrations,
she held peace signs high,
shouted as if she owned
the keys to her life.
No one thought her body frail,
(least of all me).
She was supposed to last forever.
Or walk erect until the end.
That's a mother.
Now she's in a nursing home
screaming,
her old life shadowing the bed,
throngs of people marching,
wars raging,
children waiting.
Sister
The pain of brother runs
through her veins
like first son's blood hunting a new river-flow.
Holding onto new prey,
he does not look back.
The new life is solely his. He defines -- creates --
without them. That was
Nature's plan, after all.
Their parents are almost dead.
He will see her when
their mother goes.
Then his freedom from the old river
that ran his mind until
his body fled
will be assured. He knows. (His life's that way).
As for her, she no longer
waits her brother's hand.
She studies the river from which he ran.
(first published in Poets West Literary Journal, spring 1999)
If I Could Stop the
Words,
I Would
but they trail me like
a train
moving the night
carrying
the children
to places
they'd never been
before
they were taken.
Che
In 1970, I hung
a picture of Che Guevara on the wall.
I was in love with him. What did I know?
I liked his beret and mustache,
his dark brown hair.
I'm Jewish. I don't believe
in Christ,
but even today, and it's almost 1996,
I stare at his body in The New York Times,
and his eyes touch me.
In October 1967, the
Bolivian government and CIA killed him,
put his body on display in Vallegrande.
Local women said he bore an uncanny resemblance to Jesus.
They kissed his hair. I could have run my fingers through it.
Argentine agents wanted
to check his fingerprints.
They cut off his hands. I could have held his hands.
(first published in Poets West Literary Journal, spring 1999)
Esther Altshul Helfgott's 'The Homeless One: A Poem in Many Voices', a chap-book-length conversation about homelessness and schizophrenia, was published by KotaPress in Jan 2000, and can be ordered from the publisher directly. Other writing appearances include The American Psychoanalyst, Arizona Post, Baltimore Jewish Times, Chrysanthemum, Genesis 2, London Jewish Chronicle, Midway Review, New York Jewish Week, Off Our Backs, The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review, She Speaks, Spindrift, Switched-on-Gutenberg (eJournal) and 'Writing Personal Poetry: Creating Poems from Your Experiences', (Sheila Bender, Writers Digest, 1998). Esther teaches at the Richard Hugo House Community Center for the Literary Arts in Seattle, WA.
