Writer's Group meets at Giant Supermarket / Poems: Love of Car -My first visit to the New Jewish Museum

Beatriz took the photo w/her iPad. She sent me two other great photos but I couldn't upload them for some reason. One was of Mary's beautiful black lab guide dog, Garland.

Today was Shop-for-Superbowl Day so the store was extra-mobbed.

At the end of the meeting, Scott stopped by cuz he needed to pick up a few things for his delicious pea soup. He said he saw me dashing around the store and tried to catch up w/me. Actually, I had done my shopping before the meeting, but was now in search for a new junk-mail carton with a lid.

Everyone in the group presented excellent work. Martha had a new chapter of her book on the Bible characters Mary and Martha, beautifully written. I imagine it could get published somewhere.

"Where" is the problem. I just sent the group websites for Duotrope's Digest and Poet's and Publisher's Weekly.

Linda wrote a terrific short story, the best of anything she's wrin, in my opinion, called Love Among Fireflies, based on a true story a couple of years ago, when members of Pennypack Trust nature center went on a 'firefly walk.' Scott and I were also there.

In the story she calls me Agnes and Scott is Ibrahim.

What really happened during the walk was that an incompetent woman led it and lost most of the members of the group. It was pitch-black and we couldn't see. She assumed we were following and never looked back.

Look, this isn't Lot's wife we're talking about - she and Lot were fleeing Sodom and were told not to look back. When she disobeyed, she was turned into a pillar of salt.

Or, Orpheus, who attempted to rescue his beloved wife Eurydice from Hades, and was told not to look back as she followed him out from the depths of hell.

Oops! She vanished forever, as did my father and my brother when they departed from this good world.

Donna also wrote a great poem which, like Linda's story, our workshop tried to re-work, committee-style. I sent them a email about this, saying: Preserve the writer's voice.

I presented two poems.

LOVE OF CAR

from my living-room window
it looks beautiful
the car to last a lifespan

like an arranged marriage
I learned to love it more and more
grey as the skies in the Philadelphia winter
or my hair before the Clairol

a fin, attached for beauty,
unsightly at first,
pleases me now,
my car:
the dandy.

yesterday driving home
from the book club
- where were we exactly? –
on Davisville, past the train station,
the florist and the music school
an odd sensation entered me
like a newly blooming flower
awareness engulfed me
- was I inside a balloon? -
the aftermath, perhaps, of reading
Jacob’s Room?

“I am riding in a seat” I exclaimed,
"a chair with wheels,"
felt the whole expanse of the universe
compress into my car
“So this is what it means to drive a car,” I said.

My sweet-smelling pink-lotioned hands
steadied the wheel
Freedom!
I left the shops behind
without saying farewell
I can go to the left or the right
clunky shoes on the pedal
I can accelerate
I can speed
right into You, if I wish,
or, into the pond,
though Virginia preferred the River Ouse.

It’s said that Nirvana once achieved
rarely comes again
but I pray Nirvana will find me again
as I enter my car
my Jacob’s Room.


MY FIRST VISIT TO THE NEW JEWISH MUSEUM IN DOWNTOWN PHILADELPHIA

the glass building signifies
transparency
jews can never hide
our radiance shines unto the heavens
clustered on the escalator
the visitors descend
jews, all three,
but how do i know?
it puzzles me
something about the face
the stance
the movement
has god kissed our eyes?
left a seal upon our brow?
sheer beauty for those who
know how to find it
others shake with fear
o cousin anne frank
they turned you in for a
few gold coins
then spent their remaining years
yearning for forgiveness.
o how we cried.