Poem: L’dor v’dor


In the grocery store, the cashier passes

a wrapped chicken across the glass scanner,

a dozen eggs, two pomegranates

like small projectiles waiting to explode.

Am I right that you’re a Jew, he says.

And, yes, I hesitate before answering yes.

His voice is thick with some other country,

like tahini spread on a piece of toast.

I have started to wear a blackened star

around my neck, hard angles interwoven

and the chain heavy-linked. Here, 

at the checkout, the man tells me the origin

of bagels—our narrative is full of food, he says—

that they were shaped as little echoes 

of another bread, a braided 

ring of dough to celebrate the year. 

We are strangers here together, 

where we place these stories in the open 

mouths of paper bags. We are 

sesame seeds and the flaking snow of salt.

We are everything scattered.


I see this as a very American poem. The silences between the lines printed here may evoke centuries of middle eastern and east european history, much of it tragic. Yet in the casual conversation recounted we can intuit the experience of America as a nation of immigrants, a place where we can be “strangers here together,” sharing our stories amicably, in our everyday lives. -Alicia Ostriker