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Puncher & Wattmann - Magdalena Ball

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94 pages

English

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Description

Though she was only fourteen years old, like many other Jews in Eastern Europe's Pale of Settlement in 1907, Rebecca Lieberman gathered her few belongings and left for the United States. What follows is a unique and poetic story of history, war, mysticism, music, abuse, survival and transcendence against the backdrop of New York City in the '20s, '30s and '40s.

Sujets

Oceanian

Australian

Poetry

Informations

Publié par	Puncher & Wattmann
Date de parution	01 juillet 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781922571892
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© Magdalena Ball 2023
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study and research, criticism, review or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.
Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

First published in 2023
Published by Puncher and Wattmann PO Box 279
Waratah NSW 2298

https:// www.puncherandwattmann.com web@puncherandwattmann.com

ISBN 9781922571601

Cover design by Miranda Douglas, Image: “Author’s own photo of Rebecca Lieberman, colourised by Jamil Khann”
Typesetting by Morgan Arnett
Printed by Lightning Source International

A catalogue record for this work is available from the National Library of Australia
Contents

Arrival
A Voice to Shatter Glass
Footprints
The Pale of Settlement
Two kopeks
The Black Hundreds
Taken with Time
Philology
Double Migrant
After the Partition
Ocean Mandala
The Lost Sister
Guide to the United States for the Jewish Immigrant
Mother of Exiles
Empire Erased
Small Woman with a Big Bag

Azure
Mamaloshen
Space Between Worlds
Between the Ocean and the Stone
Divination
Manhattan, Assembly District 8
Azure
A Devout Child
Cairn
Land of the Immigrant

Fish Smoker
Third Avenue EL
Like light in a dream
Peddlers
Pickled Herring Pushcart
Diddikai
Every Poem is a Lie
Bear of a Man
La Grippe
Potatoes
Sugar
Ephemeral Washington Square

Beyond the Pale
A Careless Cigarette
The Consequence of Silence
Beyond the Pale
Silence and Monkeys
Invisible Strokes
Love Wounds
Pomegranates
Words are Bullets
Tar Beach (Kelly Street)

The Body is an Instrument
Nickel Empire
Another War
Operation Barbarossa
Memorial Fountain (Bryant Park)
News from the Old World
The frailty of parchment
Spoons
Eva Stormgirl
Goodie Basket
Single Vernacular

Tikkun Olam
Low Chroma (Coney Island, 1946)
Yennevelt
One Wandering Eye
Subject to Dispersal
Skeleton Leaf
Kussmaul breathing
Repairing the World
Tikkun Olam
Human Bandwidth
What Remains

Notes and Sources
General References
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Arrival
A Voice to Shatter Glass
Every object has its own
resonant frequency
run a finger along the rim: ghost hum.
People lined up at her door
money in closed fists, ready to hear secrets
wrapped in a soothing voice
break the glass.
They came in secret
tea leaves, a gilt-rimmed cup
left with something other than answers
it was not that kind of fortune.
She hummed, a single note amplified
working through the cavity of the mouth
the pharynx, stretched along the larynx,
a portal
carrying sound
mechanical waves move
through gas, liquid, solids
through the medium of time.
Press your ear against the table now
and it’s there still
carrying energy outward
from the hallway
of a cramped apartment
smelling of damp clothing
and barley soup
into the streets
into the future
rushing pushing
struggling, shattering
air, water, glass,
irrupting into
the impossible present.
Footprints
She kept her head low
left few footprints.
There weren’t many traces.
Given the dates
we can work out what’s possible
if you study the evidence, scant as it is.
Why go so far
leave behind everything
mother, father, siblings, home
forever
time being what it was
back then.
Why so many that year
arriving with the same look
tired, lost, fearful in sepia
clutching worn leather bags
a different migration
to my own
but everything is connected.
I wanted to know what it felt like
and you, Bobish
you needed to tell me
even after so many years
from the relative comfort
of your clean bones
and hidden grave.
The Pale of Settlement
In Imperial Russia
from 1791 to 1917
it was forbidden for Jews
to live beyond The Pale of Settlement.
The Pale contained
the uncivilised, reprehensible
not-really-Russian
banished from the interior.
The original Pale
was designed to keep out
the unpredictable, unwashed Irish.
A strip of land stretching
from Dundalk in Louth
to Daley in Dublin
subject to the English King.
From palus , meaning fenced
as in paling fence
a boundary, ring bound.
Separate cultures both forged
from the pressure of
exclusion
struggling against
invisible
lines of demarcation.
She could have gone to Ireland
instead of America
there was family there
so she heard.
There could have been cousins
anywhere, scattered from
sacred homelands
lost tribes, lost family
diaspora of the unwanted
reaching across oceans
and time,
Pale to Pale.
Two kopeks
Seven of them one room
grandparents crouched small alcove below
broken stove no daylight.
It was not always
the winter before heating space a piano
nimble fingers unscarred played in waning light
curtains blowing
two kopeks in her pocket for sweets.
The piano burned in the first pogrom
no one wanted that music
she could no longer remember the notes.
Seven hours they hid in the gap
fear pungent as rotting fruit
gunshot for hours windows shattering
hands over the baby’s mouth.
They knew then they would have to go
only how
who stays who goes
passports can take months
cost more than they have
her grandparents would not have
survived
the long journey steerage
her parents would have to join later
when she could send money gelt
order tickets her cousins
had already gone
promises rained onto the steamship
she could not see
from where she huddled
for days she heard those words
falling in her head
like the sound of gunshot
shattering windows.
The Black Hundreds
No one remembers anything
or if they remember
they don’t want to talk.
You start with a clue. A phrase.
Something resonant.
In this case, The Black Hundreds
whispered silently.
There were rumbles at first
the odd beating
break-through bleeding
neighbour against neighbour.
Antisocial, anti-liberal
antisemite: monarchists
knives, knuckledusters, flags
devotion to the Tsar
House of Romanov
church and motherland.
Dry, metallic, caustic
plates falling off the sidebar
scrape of shoes on the tiles
two grooves in the dirt
where they dragged her auntie.
Brutal signs were everywhere
blood, skin, broken bodies
lintel hanging off windows.
Her mother gave her a bag of coins
the brass samovar, told her to pack
quickly.
You didn’t need tea
leaves to read what was coming.
Taken with Time
She knew the drill
it was as familiar as sleep

the worn trajectory of terror
voices in the distance, banging, barking

the doppler as they moved closer
sound increasing in pitch

like a freight train of atrocities.
We needn’t speak of it

it happened, it was in the past
she ran, closing her eyes: don’t look back .
Philology
Her grandparents were forced
to take last names.
How to choose
occupation, toponym
personal qualities, lineage?
Her mother changed her first name
they all did.
Memory rewrote the record
transition into history.
Sources are unreliable
untruths, inaccuracies
they did not want to be discovered.
Names can be used against you
signifiers, identifiers.
Every encounter begins
with the same question:
What is your name?
She made one up. Small enough to fit
in a box on a form. Small enough to cup
in her hands, to hide inside.
Rivka to Rebecca
Rebecca to Beckie.
Her family did not take a name
until they were compelled
threats of disenfranchisement
promises of freedom.
First they were forced into the Pale
tagged, delineated
then they were expelled.
The threats were carried out
the promises weren’t.
She left everything behind
except her new name.
Her surname meant beloved.
Her given name meant
“bound”, “tied”, as in, to the earth.
She was unbound, set adrift
could not find her way back
there were no maps that led to home.
Even the name of her country changed
shifted, ceased to exist
was destroyed
denied
but she survived.
Double Migrant
Before she left the largest
ghetto in the world
a small woman on a big ship
she was already a migrant

in the margins of legality
crouching in the space
between integration
and segregation
watching, waiting.
After the Partition
Her father was a Polish-Lithuanian
merchant
travelling back and forth
along the Silk Road
heady spices, perfumes, furs, textiles
whatever people wanted to buy.
Craggy borders against the Baltic Sea
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus
carved up and served like brisket
to Russia and Prussia.
After the partition
he became Russian.
This was not a rapid process
he knew the illusion
of nationality
no matter the name
Poland, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania
the one constant
they did not belong.
Arriving in Moscow
banished from the interior
penned in, career cancelled.
Under such pressure
something woke in him
forcing a transformation.
He would not leave again
no matter what
until everyone else was safe.
Her mother’s hair was a frizzy halo
golden brown beneath a floral kerchief
scent of violets just below perception,
when neighbours became enemies
the horse fell down in the street
nothing felt solid enough
to hold them in place.
Ocean Mandala
Solitude was the feedback loop
she sailed in on.
Every shade of blue reduced, saturated
intensified.
Her eyes became a kaleidoscope
spiralling with the water, refracted
through tears she kept from falling
as the boat steamed towards a destination
imagined and unknown. She was younger
than she looked and she looked like a child.
The steamship was so cramped she claimed
the space beneath her feet just to breathe.
Do I look sick in the eyes?
The sky and the ocean reflected one another