NEVER ENOUGH

by Judy Kronenfeld

The people embracing each other, wiping

tears from their eyes, kneeling

to place roses and carnations, 

the banner headlines, the when

is enough enough? Then the families

home alone after our national rituals,

the presidential visit. Now the children’s

bereft bedrooms, the stories slipping

down front pages and inside the newspaper,

then gone, now Absence just beginning

to take up residence, burrowing

in and in and in. 

Judy Kronenfeld’s fifth full-length collection of poetry Groaning and Singing was published by FutureCycle Press in February, 2022. Previous books include Shimmer (WordTech, 2012) and Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017). Her poems have appeared widely in journals including Cider Press Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, Offcourse,  Slant, and Verdad.

THE ANTIDOTE

by Judy Kronenfeld

John R. Lewis, 1940-2020

Given poverty, he created dignity.
Given indifference, he returned passion for justice.
Given intolerance, he expanded the meaning of tolerance.
Given violence, he gave his bashed-in skull.

He made himself the instrument of that oh-so-slowly bending arc—
so slow, it is easy to lose courage, but he didn’t.
Given venomous hatred, he returned love
because hate destroys the hater, and he knew it.

Parents, sit your children on your knees,
and explain to them—not marble
nor the gilded monuments,
nor lofty towers emblazoned—
explain to them what greatness is.

Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent collections of poetry are Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, 2nd edition (Antrim House, 2012)—winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Ghost Town, New Ohio Review, One (Jacar Press), Rattle, South Florida Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and other journals, and in more than two dozen  anthologies. She is Lecturer Emerita, Department of Creative Writing, UC Riverside, and an Associate Editor of Poemeleon.

FIDDLING AND BURNING

by Judy Kronenfeld

Because we are old, and will be,
conveniently, dead

Because no parent or grandparent
can bear to think of it

Because the elephant’s in the room,
but we are blind, and cannot
agree

And the will needed is like the will
of a mobilized ant colony
with group mind

Because the everyday is still
preoccupying, comforting, beautiful,
and Noah needs help cutting out snowflakes
for the kindergarten bulletin board
with its autumn leaves, spring rain, summer
daisies, and Sophia needs to find her cleats
for soccer practice

Because the expansion of the universe
is speeding up into ever more dizzying infinities,
exponential zeroes of space-time
empty of us, or almost anything, and emptying

And what’s a billion hardly forever years
of seasons, anyway—wet and dry, hot and cold, grief
and peace—before we brown, boil, burn,
and are swallowed by the sun,
and who says we, relatively new kid on the block,
at only 200,000 orbits around that star,
will still be here when the oceans begin
to evaporate?

Because our planet is already haunting us
like a memorial portrait, as we write
our lost-cause civilizations off.
It turns inside my mind,
courtesy Google Earth, day and night:
with its perfect halo
of atmosphere, its cool webbing
of gossamer or clotted clouds, and the stilled golden
explosions of New York, Los Angeles,
Shanghai, Mumbai, Moscow, Istanbul,
Rome, Paris, London.

Judy Kronenfeld is the author of four full-length collections and two chapbooks of poetry, including Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, 2nd edition (Antrim House, 2012)—winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, DMQ Review, Ghost Town, Miramar, Natural Bridge, One (Jacar Press), Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and other journals, and in more than twenty anthologies.

THIS COUNTRY

by Judy Kronenfeld





        Anti-Semitism was something that happened in history,
        that happened in other places.
        —Sophia Levin, 15, Tree of Life congregant              


My immigrant father, born in Germany,
was “a little roughed up” after Hitler,
after the first anti-Jewish decrees,
was scared “once or twice” by a knock
on the door before he left for America
with his younger brother in 1934,
following his parents the year before.
Only his settled older sister and her
family made the mistake of staying
until they couldn’t escape.

Maybe in order to live
in this new country, to have
 a wife and child of his own,
my father chose to keep his sister’s story
mostly close within, his private
memorial flame. Maybe his heart
was so heavy it broke, but he wouldn’t let
it scar and harden against love, or let
a furrowed brow cloud every hour,
unlike a few whom evil terrorized
beyond hope.

All I know:  as a young child growing up,
here, in this country, I wasn’t compelled
or even invited to dwell, to imagine
the last years of those relatives
I could never meet:  the broken glass
on the streets, the stars shining
on their coats, the black engines
steaming in the station, the swallowing
fear in their stomachs, then the soup
of potato skins, the lice,
then their starved flesh and protruding bones
becoming smoke just about when I was born
on a golden, free street.

But eleven people exterminated in a synagogue,
on Shabbas morning, here, in this country,
in Pittsburgh—native ground
of Gerald Stern, Michael Chabon,
Gertrude Stein—by someone who says
All these Jews need to die, and as I rage and mourn,
a sliver of imagination lacerates
my heart with fear and makes my stomach quail,
and I can hear the heavy boots on the stairs,
the rap of knuckles on the door at 2 A.M.,
and I can see my aunt, my uncle,
my cousins whom I’ve never seen,
who were wrapped away from me
by my father’s love, who were herded
at gun point to their deaths—
arising out of the safely past and gone.

Judy Kronenfeld’s last three books of poetry are Bird Flying through the Banquet(FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, 2nd edition (Antrim House, 2012)—winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, DMQ Review, Ghost Town,  Rattle, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other journals, and in two dozen anthologies. She also writes creative nonfiction, which has appeared frequently in Under the Sun, in Hippocampus, and in other places. She is Lecturer Emerita, Creative Writing, UC Riverside, and an Associate Editor of Poemeleon. 

AGAINST PURITY

by Judy Kronenfeld

My father slipped out of Nazi Germany 

in history’s hidden pocket, but the sister

and her family he never talked about stepped 

over the crack between everyday

and juggernaut (deportiert 1942, verschollen
in Auschwitz, or für tot erklart

in the same hell). 

Briefly paused in Recife

on the way to Ascension Island,

courtesy of the U.S. Army, 1944, my father took in

the faces in gradations of brown,

and said, according to family legend:

“We should all intermarry

until we blend.” As if, to fuse 

the blacks and whites, the us

and them tense in his newly beloved

America would move us towards

a gene-pool Esperanto, one flavor, nothing

sticking out, nothing to hoist

a flag, or cross or crescent on.

Even a star. 

        

He dipped his pinky

in the Passover wine to spill the ten drops 

for the plagues God visited on the Egyptians,

and with his post-retirement

congregation, bowed to praise

the Creator “who has set us apart.”

But never held himself

apart or wished a plague

on anyone. In his decline, when congregants

visited the dementia wing, he could still mumble

the Hebrew prayers he’d learned by rote

as a kid, though almost everything 

in his life—including Paula, Mendel, 

Hermann and Charlotte—

was by then verschollen.

But someone is always saying

We’ve fallen from our ancient  purity—
take back our country!

        

Someone like Anders Breivik, self-trained in pure

ruthlessness, whose bomb and bullets 

shattered the charm enclosing open Norway. 

I remember  all of Oslo—like a village—

celebrating light in the dark 

of the autumnal equinox, 

gathering for the River Walk, 

the mud-slick banks of the Akerselva glowing

with candles and torches, spangles flickering

off the silver foil the school kids used 

to decorate the trees, all families—adopted African

or Asian children, Muslim mothers

in their sculpted head-scarves—

safe as houses.

And someone else, afraid to disagree,

will wave a torn and faded

flag, so long suppressed,

and holler yes!         

        

Like the proud father who bows

to God when his wife-and-kids-abandoning son 

fighting for Islamic State in Syria

is killed, who celebrates that son’s

martyr’s wedding (though the mother says

‘it’s a funeral for me’) in a great tent 

draped with black. 

        

It makes me want 

all things maculate, muddied

mottled, pocked, all things

tainted,     

stained,

blotchy, motley,

mongrel, splotched,

hybrid, scrambled,

half-caste —

If that’s what it takes

to defy Ein Volk, Ein Reich
Ein Führer, the wished-for

Caliphate, Judea and Samaria,

Trump’s Muslim- and Latino-

free America.         

Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent books of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012) and the second edition of Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths (Antrim House, 2012), winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize. Her fourth full collection, Bird Flying through the Banquet, will be published by FutureCycle Press in the spring of 2017. Her poems have appeared widely in  print and online journals including American Poetry Journal, Calyx, Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, DMQ Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Louisville Review, Natural Bridge, The Pedestal, Portland Review, Sequestrum, Spoon River Poetry Review, Stirring, and Valparaiso Review, and in more than twenty anthologies. She is Lecturer Emerita, Dept. of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside, and Associate Editor of the online journal, Poemeleon.

COLUMBINE, SANDY HOOK, TUCSON, AURORA, LITTLETON, BLACKSBURG, DECATUR (ALMOST), AND NOW THE D.C. NAVY YARD, ON AND ON

by Judy Kronenfeld

We've all seen, or heard of it--
some chemical  sparked by pain
does a crazed dance
in the brain, and the geek nephew
everyone thought a natural, can’t
face another year in school and
come September, comes unglued, almost froths
at the mouth by the breakfast bar,
spittle roping from his lips,
violently throws off the arms
that try to comfort him, and who knows
what next; the co-worker not yet
in the news, who’s had it up to here
plus, with more work and a benefits
cut, rampages in the Men’s,
pulling sinks from the wall
and smashing them, or goes home
where his wife mysteriously falls
and breaks her arm. O.K. they’ve always
had a tendency, drank too much,
yelled at their wives or parents,
bullied their classmates or younger
brothers, locked themselves
in their rooms; O.K. some of us
tried, we really did, got them
to counselors, it’s not our fault,
is it, if they refused to go,
or quit their meds? And some of us
closed our eyes because familial
ties make anything familiar,
and the desire to protect can blind,
and some of us sternly disallowed
the inappropriate—“Pull up those
bootstaps, kid! Right-face!”—
and some of us kicked the fellow
to the side of the road. And some of us—
lots of us—have no way to recognize
what goes awry, ourselves already brutalized,
and so many of us have no way
to guide, no knowledge, no resources,
not a dime to spare to soothe
a crazy head. We don’t help
these people—we give them
guns.


Judy Kronenfeld's most recent collections of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012) and the second edition of  Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, winner of The Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize for 2007 (Antrim House, 2012). Recent anthology appearances include Before There Is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012) and Love over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems (Mayapple Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in many print and online journals such as Calyx, Cimarron Review, The American Poetry Journal, Fox Chase Review,  Foundling Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Natural Bridge, New Verse News, The Pedestal, Poetry International, Spoon River Poetry Review, Stirring, and The Women’s Review of Books.

CRUEL APRIL

by Judy Kronenfeld





                          after the Boston Marathon, and after seeing
                                the documentary, “Syria behind the Lines”


Crystalline cool days—bougainvillea
spills from our walls like rivulets
outdoing one another, like lavish
manes of brilliant, curly scarlet
tossed flirtatiously by the wind—
and in our yard, exploding galaxies
of snow-in-summer; popped up orange liqueur
poppy cups; torches of white iris…

Exploding fire, and the red ochre of blood

spattered over Boylston Street, as if a dark perversion

of Holi came frenzied through—no playful

faces splashed marigold, indigo,

saffron praising spring—leaving behind shreds

of clothes, glass, flesh…

And in Syria, somewhere, again
and again, convulsed young faces
buried in the chests of older men,
whose hands pull the faces in to blot out
what they’re seeing and their screaming,
so the fighting can go on.

Still in Syria somewhere—opulence
of nets of oranges and grapefruits
hanging above the fruit-juice stands piled
with lemons, carrots, melons? Is there hope
for cool sweetness in the throat—intensities
of blended watermelon, strawberry,
banana, milk, honey, mint—families strolling
in the cooling midnight streets, old men
playing chess on 2 A.M. sidewalks…?
             
On a talk show two broadcasters

argue almost raucously over

whether a newspaper was right

to cut off at the knees a photo

of a man’s legs blasted off below

the knees, in Boston…

And, somewhere, in Syria, again,
and again, a dreamy, peaceful
sweetness sweeps over the bearded face
of a very young man, many times wounded,
many times returned to the rebel lines—
who has already or will join al-Nusra—as he speaks
of his hope to become a martyr.

Here, at home, in California,
where the bougainvillea bursts
in a frenzy of bloom, two friends—a relative,
a poet—dead in the ordinary old way,
of early cancer, of old age.


Judy Kronenfeld’s most recent collections of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012) and the second edition of  Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, winner of The Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize for 2007 (Antrim House, 2012). Recent anthology appearances include Before There Is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012) and Love over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems (Mayapple Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in many print and online journals such as Calyx, Cimarron Review, The American Poetry Journal, Fox Chase Review,  Foundling Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Natural Bridge, New Verse News, The Pedestal, Poetry International,  Spoon River Poetry Review, Stirring, and The Women’s Review of Books.