He died on August 15, 1964,

during that hot hot summer.

Mother sent his clothes

down to Mississippi

for the Freedom Riders

or anybody else who needed them.

I wish she would have left just one item out for me,

something with his smell still on it.

One of his shirts, maybe, with the stained collar

or the worn down brown Oxfords

that he always polished.

I would have loved to have the fedora he wore all winter

or a pair of white socks

that he filled with Dr. Scholl's foot powder.

She could have left me anything: a handkerchief,

his bathing suit, an undershirt,

or those thin black leather shoe laces

he always broke.

I would have liked the shaving brush I bought him

or the striped tie he spilled soup on.

Certainly his false teeth, the cup he put them in

and the tall glass he sipped hot tea from.

I would have liked his Russian-English dictionary.

or his bifocals and his damn racing forms.

She could have left me anything,

even the belt he hit my brother with.

    Esther Altshul Helfgott is our Poet in Residence for September. Previously: Uncle Ben: What the Number Said, A Poem is a Space, and Driving Home from Mother's House_.

 

    This poem appeared previously in Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature, vol. 2 (2005).