1. A Poem in Two Mood Swings
   
   1.
   
   I am the daughter who came after
   those who went to heaven
   through the opening of a chimney at Auschwitz
   or the lucky ones who sailed through a harbor
   waving the torch of their hearts
   at a statue
   never mentioning
   the two grandparents who remained
   
   as life skipped a generation
   and gravel filled my mouth
   with uncomfortable silence.
   
   I pick out stones now
   and place them on graves
   no, throw them at the pits of Hell.
   Here's one, two, three, four...
   
   a volley of stones
   transporting me back
   to when I ran
   in fields
   with my cousin, my sister, my uncle
   looking for any hole
   where we could bury ourselves
   and never come out
   
   
   2.
   
   My parents spoke Hungarian,
   not Yiddish.
   
   They ate stuffed cabbage,
   not lox and bagels.
   
   On Yom Kippur
   my sister's friends
   came over the house
   to stuff themselves.
   
   We were a refuge
   from being Jewish.
   
   All my teachers
   in the New York City school system
   were Jewish.
   
   When my father was growing up in Hungary
   he use to protect the smaller boys
   from getting beat up.
   
   My father was a Communist
   who sent my older sister out
   to buy the Daily World.
   
   Politics made people argue
   or disappear underground.
   Everything was hidden.
   
   When my father was dying from cancer
   my mother didn't want him to know what was wrong
   because she was afraid he wouldn't fight it.
   
   On his deathbed
   he told us to never forget we were Jewish.