Yizker Bukh

Memory is flotsam (yes) just below the surface an eternal city a heap of rubble debris smaller than your fist an animal with- out a leash organized wreck- age ghost net or one hanging silence on the phone— she's gone, my sister said, and we wept and wept over my grandmother while my sister sat with her body and me in the static and the rabbi they sent told her to recite psalms as comfort so we listened to each other breathe instead and my sister's breath was a tunnel a handful of pebbles a knotted Chinese jump-rope         her breath was the coiled terrycloth turban our grandmother wore when she cooked or walked the shallow end of her condo pool for exercise— our grandmother still somewhere in her white turban sewing Cornish game hens together with needle and string or somewhere in her good wig playing poker or somewhere in her easy chair watching CNN while cookies shaped like our initials bake in her oven O memory how much you erased how many holes         we punched in your facts since who knows the stories she never told about the camps there are no marked graves just too much food on holidays diabetes my mother's fear of ships and the motion of some suspension bridges O memory you've left us trauma below the surface and some above like the fact that I can't shake the December my sister's red hair caught fire from leaning too close to the menorah's candles, our grandmother putting her out with a dish towel with her strong arms.