CATALOGUING OUR NAMES

by Karen Marker

 

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts. —The New York Times, February 13, 2026


Still in the down of the dream world a text 
comes from Mona that says you are so brave
which means she must have seen my Facebook post 
about ICE and knows of the threats made 
about collecting names. I also named 
the commandment from Exodus about how 
we should treat the stranger. 

Such a long list of us, once strangers ourselves. 
Will they record our names, imprison all of us, 
including the thirteen-year-old who read the torah portion 
and the rabbi who said all who want to take a stand rise
and come up for the blessings?  No one was left in their seats.  
We were packed so tight together, all of us touching 
someone who was touching the parchment, another name 
for light holding the words like a mother. Like the mother 
who stood beside me holding her child 

with deep brown eyes staring straight into my eyes.
She didn’t look away from my tearing up 
like I can’t look away from what keeps me awake 
at night thinking of the children in the prison camps,
the names I need to speak so I won’t forget.
Receiving blessings, touching light, 
we were one breathing body.  

What can I text Mona that will soothe her fear
for the dark skin she got from her Indian Hindu 
father, her Mizrachi Jewish mother?  Even 
with her credentials that made her a top doctor
specialist, gave her a beautiful suburban life, 
she’s still afraid for her son and tells me she couldn’t 
survive without her medicines, not one day 
in that prison camp and I admit I’m just as scared 
of being sent away. It’s all that’s unhealed 

that makes us even more afraid.  It is the cage,
the chains, the clanging doors of our brains, 
how the past climbs back up and casts us out. 
But now Mona is calling, telling me how
everyone’s been working so hard in Ohio, like one
family.  At least for today there’s a stay by the judge, 
the Haitians in Springfield are safe.

    
Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist and retired school psychologist whose poetry of protest and hope in response to the news will be coming out as a book in the coming year.  Her poetry has appeared in NVN and various other journals including The MacGuffin, The Monterey Poetry Review, the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Slant, and WordPeace. Her book of flash memoir and poetry Beneath the Blue Umbrella is available through Finishing Line Press and explores resilience in face of family trauma.  

SEVENTH NIGHT

by Judith Terzi

A fleeing suspect was arrested
with blood spilling over his clothing
smelling of bleach. Candle wax
dripping down my silver-plated
menorah. Multi-colored wax
clinging to its round base, clogging
its candle holders that we clean
each festival night. My family
closed blinds when we lit the candles
just after the war in Philly. This
same menorah with a star of David
in the middle guarded by the claws
of a lion on either side. The suspect
could have stabbed my grandfather
and my great-grandfather––Hasids
like the five he stabbed on the seventh
night of Chanukah. My grandfather
could have given me a check for $5,
written Chanukah gelt in the lower
left-hand corner with a hand unused
to writing English letters. My parents
could have given me another pair
of pajamas on the seventh night,
or a jigsaw puzzle, or a Toni doll,
or a dress my mother would have
sewn on her Singer. We closed
blinds when we lit the menorah.
The suspect wielded a large knife.
The children stopped singing, and
the dreidel stopped spinning, and
the rabbi prayed for his congregants
and for his son who were stabbed.
And for the victims of the twelve
other acts of violence against
Hasids in the past three weeks.
And the people are terrified.
And the country stays divided.

Judith Terzi is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay Books) as well as of five chapbooks including If You Spot Your Brother Floating By and Casbah (Kattywompus). Her poetry appears widely in literary journals and anthologies, has been nominated for Best of the Net and Web and a Pushcart, and read on Radio 3 of the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and taught high school French for many years as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

CARRYING FORWARD

by Tricia Knoll 

I have too many funerals to plan.
That’s what the rabbi said when asked

how he handles the mourning
and mornings that come after

the worst has happened. I need a break
the physician begs, no more stinking news.

I have to practice healing all over again.
The poet chews up the words she knows

for hate and they rub raw like hand-me-down
rags, unbought, stamped like prison garb.

The child asks after the star. What night
holds the star on that building?

The parents try to say all nights, all stars,
we are all one under all of them.

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who grew up in a community similar to Squirrel Hill. She regularly attends a church in a denomination whose buildings have come under violent attack for its religious liberalism and strong social justice stands.

A PRAYER IN ACTION

by Lynnie Gobeille

In a prayer shawl, Shmuel Herzfeld, American Open Orthodox rabbi who heads Ohev Shalom Synagogue in Washington, DC was carried off by security moments after protesting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at AIPAC on March 21, 2016. He explained his action in the Washington Post, ‘I was sitting six rows away from the stage. And as Trump began his speech, I rose from my seat. I spread my tallit over my shoulders, raised my hands up high and declared: “This man is wicked. He inspires racists and bigots. He encourages violence. Do not listen to him.” With every cell in my body, I felt the obligation to declare his wickedness to the world.’

                  for Shmuel Herzfeld

Prayer shawls . . .
the Dude knew
he would abide.
Gandhi knew too
and preached Kindness.
Mother Teresa said:
“The truth is in your actions.”

I no longer know what truth is
watching my people change
shape-shifting to survive . . .
building walls to keep some out-
in the same country
that welcomed my mother home.

I am one generation away
from all your killing stones.

The Dude said: abide.
I whisper this—
a tune any child can recite:
Peace—to you this Easter
Shalom . . . I say—
wrapping my prayer shawl tight.


Lynnie Gobeille lives and writes in Rhode Island . . . watching out for the Lamed Vav Ẓaddikim who cross her path.