My Friends Baked Cake and We Ordered Lox and Whitefish from the Deli

By Merle Feld

I stood there shoulder to shoulder with the men
when they hacked a piece off your little thing -
could I really sit in the room next door
and let my fantasies run wild when I heard you cry?

And yet, at the crucial moment, I wasn't watching.
I was staring off into space at some invisible focal point.
The same one I'd stared at through hours of labor?
Maybe.
Maybe the same one Sarah stared at
when Abraham took her baby up to the mountain.

I'm not angry, but you know,
you're a little weird, you male Jewish God.
 What do you need with all those foreskins, anyway?

Leaving Egypt

By Merle Feld

The night is so dark
and I am afraid.
I see nothing, smell nothing,
the only reality -
I am holding my mother's hand.

And as we walk
I hear the sounds
of a multitude in motion -
in front, behind,
all around,
a multitude in motion.

I have no thought of tomorrow,
now, in the darkness,
there is only motion
and my mother's hand.