Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....
Undesirable Alien
I'm surprised to note
how frail and grey she is
memory still clinging
to a strident-voiced
robust woman who
ordered my life
in disagreeable ways;
our years together
one long war of attrition
me forever backing up
helplessly ceding territory.
She still the same
says American Immigration
won't let her cross borders
considers her an undesirable alien.
I agree, feel it is
extremely undesirable that
parents alienate offspring
but the parallel dies hastily
she'd never understand - the joke.
Union organizer
egalitarian
agitator extraordinaire
anarchist moulded from
Red Emma clay; my mother.
Any cause hers so long as
for The Underdog. She hardly
noticed me dogging her wake
wondering when she'd notice.
From her I learned that
everyone was equal in this world
and those who were nontheless unequal
she championed. Her dedication to
causes not the idle whim of a bored mind
but a mind unreeling memory of
dead and maimed relatives
her own eyes oddly asymmetrical
still lodging shrapnel particles;
Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks.
She's a tiny, wizened
still pugnacious beatnik, peacenik
pre-dating in the search for justice
the coinage of those words. Her
lexicon the robust denial
of aggression yet I still
recall her busy and aggressive
denials of one child's demands.
The world and its twisted vision
remains her wayward child.
c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
Published in Reenbou, plurilingual poetry magazine
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