<\/div>\n\nlarge, rounded, flat.
\nPicked up on walks,
\ndeposited in the foyer
\nwith shoes and coats,
\neach one was larger than
\nthe last as my resolve
\ngrew and grew.THE DAY YOU WROTE OUR NAMES IN THE BOOK OF THE DEA<\/b><\/p>\n
\nI was wearing the red woolen cape I inherited from your mother.<\/p>\n
Her legacy to me was a mauve and cyan beaded purse, an orange scarf<\/p>\n
(which I\u2019ll never wear), two plastic crates, and this red cape.<\/p>\n
We had arrived at All Saint\u2019s Day mass early for ritual instructions.<\/p>\n
I was out of my element, even though the priest talked about Jews<\/p>\n
enslaved in Egypt, which I assumed was just for me. You, mourning<\/p>\n
your mother, were instructed to process, slowly, after the homily.<\/p>\n
Then candle in hand, before heading to the pew, you signed us in<\/p>\n
only to realize mid-mass when the priest instructed parishioners<\/p>\n
to pray for the dead inscribed in the book in the back that our names<\/p>\n
were on the list, which I confess, freaked me out. I searched my purse<\/p>\n
for white out, then hissed at you to fix it. Fix it. Fix. It. You did.<\/p>\n
You wrote your mother\u2019s first name over your first name and my sister\u2019s<\/p>\n
over mine\u2014then you told me you initialed it like any other legal document.<\/p>\n
I put on my cape. We walked outside. It was winter: sunny and cold.
\nSo much could be written about what we did not know then. <\/p>\n
PECAN PIE<\/b><\/p>\n
\nMy sister wants advice.
\nSilence would starve her.
\nI tell her, Edit. She doesn\u2019t understand.
\nShe vomits our life onto the page\u2014
\nstark action, obsession and feeling.
\nHer feelings: raw, unprocessed.
\nI tell her, No one wants to read
\nour unfiltered lives. Not even I.
\nI remind her, People want to consume us
\ncooked, refined, warm. I implore,
\nGather ingredients. Mix. Blend. Spoon. Bake.
\nShe brings me a raw egg, dark corn syrup,
\nbrown sugar, pecans in their shells.
\nShe tells me, Eat. <\/p>\n
MY NAME IS ETHYL<\/b><\/p>\n
My father wanted to name
\nhis daughters Ethyl, Methyl, and Propyl;
\nI would have been Ethyl, the eldest,
\nperhaps that explains my affinity
\nfor another Ethel\u2014Rosenberg\u2014
\nwho I saw again this weekend
\nat the refurbished American Art Museum;
\nfirst, a photograph of her with Julius
\nin a paddy wagon during their trials\u2014
\nit\u2019s trying to remember the pain
\nof Ethel, so young and so beautiful
\nin that hard-working way of socialist women;
\nthen, I saw a sketch in the portrait gallery:
\nEthel\u2019s disembodied head\u2014no neck\u2014
\nadapted from a snapshot for a protest
\nposter; the artist captured
\nher jaw set with purpose,
\nher clear eyes so certainly innocent,
\nher frizzy hair, a utilitarian halo,
\naround her determined head, oh, yes,
\nEthel. . .but my father would not
\nhave named me for you, Ethel, rather
\nfor those basic organic molecules \u2014
\nall grown you are as basic to me
\nas ethyl to a student of chemistry;
\nalthough when I was younger
\nI wanted to be my sister, heir to the name
\nPropyl, I imagined us calling
\nher Iso for short and my other sister Di,
\nbut the joke would have been
\nonly in our family\u2014it would never
\nhave translated to the hard-scrabble
\nstreets of Saginaw\u2014for that reason
\nand many others, my mother resisted
\nmy father\u2019s chemical compounds;
\nwe have bland names, we blend in,
\nuntil you meet us, until we speak,
\nthen you can imagine Ethel,
\nher grey coat, sturdy shoes, curly hair,
\nthat look of defiance in our eyes. <\/p>\n
IN VIRGINIA\u2019S MIND<\/b><\/p>\n
I gathered stones for weeks
\nlarge, rounded, flat.
\nPicked up on walks,
\ndeposited in the foyer
\nwith shoes and coats,
\neach one was larger than
\nthe last as my resolve
\ngrew and grew.
\nOn March 25th, I placed
\nthem all in coat pockets,
\nskirt pockets, even my socks
\nand shoes. They were heavy
\nand cumbersome until
\nI reached the river,
\nuntil I walked in, then stones
\npulled me down, even as
\nwater buoyed me up.<\/p>\n
www.JulieREnszer.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I gathered stones for weeks large, rounded, flat. Picked up on walks, deposited in the foyer with shoes and coats, each one was larger than the last as my resolve grew and grew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":546,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/546"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}