In my mother’s dreams, she would travel the country
recording all the Yiddish that remains in each broken family
because everyone has a yenta, but what about the keppy?
As in, let’s put our keppies together and stop being so farchadet.
My mother never went to Hebrew school because Grandma chopped off all her hair.
My mother never went to Hebrew school because she was too farchadet
because she had one too many brothers and the thunder in her brain
screams thunder, thunder, thunder over empty skies, thunder
passed down from the dark-eyed woman who broke with Russia
who taught my mother to clatter in the kitchen,
to clatter her tongue across her teeth,
to remind everyone that she had one too many brothers
and what about her broken keppy?
If she writes her dream dictionary
I hope she offers it to all the brothers and sisters—
a manifesto stitching the air,
the stormy, crackling air between them all.
