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Holishkes
By Mark Mazer
Ice trays, ice packs, ice cream, carrots, corn, broccoli,
Tupperware! A plastic box coated in frost
and inside, crystallized, stuffed cabbage --
now a mass of sauce and pulp. You
popped it out, plopped it in a pot
added water and watched it simmer
over a blue flame.
The burnt sweet and sour smell
made our kitchen a sizzling shtetl
and when the goo boiled and bubbled
you filled two bowls with the red-handled ladle.
For the last time you ate your mother’s food
but I couldn’t pass it through my lips.
“Seems to embody her soul,” I said.
You sipped and nodded yes.
~~~~~~~
from the July 2007 Edition of the Jewish Magazine
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