Author: Pessie (Sherry) Horowitz

My grandparents left me Emunah Beyond their rheumy gazes And their nightmarish dreams Was a stillness —

Professor Yehoshua November’s debut poetry collection God’s Optimism won the 2010 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award,

Before we light the Shabbos candles, she puts my hair up into a braid:
She pulls the chestnut sections tight, tugs the young strands out:

Grandfather’s passing was a whisper— a final billowing and undulating sigh that drew over our heads curled in our nostrils heady and suffocating mist of ash. He lived a muted life; but not for loss of words. He was penitent; as if the sound of his voice would rouse the ghosts he’d left behind. And […]