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I am the loneliman’s press agent
the silent man’s press agent.
I write his script
I announce his silence and my silence.
I am the loneliman’s ears –
I hear even what the lonely man cannot hear.
But I cannot be his joy,
or brother,
or find him silent lover.
Emma A. Kowalenko
Emma Alexandra – Pen Name
She established Kowalenko Consulting Group (KCG) in 1988. Born in Casablanca, Morocco she and her eastern European parents emigrated to the U.S. when she was 11. Fluent in six languages, environmental planner, cultural intelligence strategist, oral historian, poet, mixed media artist, she is passionate about giving voice to the unheard.
One of the founders of East on Central Journal of Arts and Letters, currently in its 18th year of publication, a vice president of the Sister Cities Foundation of Highland Park, she promotes cultural and educational exchanges with Sister Cities Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Modena, Italy, and Jerucham, Israel.
Friday December 22, 1939, I was seven.
While it was still daytime,
Mama and I went to the grocery store,
outside the wall.
We could still do that in December.
Piotrek the storekeeper gave me an orange.
“Got a case by train, from Italy, two days ago, one left,
for you, gift for Christmas,” he said.
Mama, I, thanked him for this last orange, golden.
He motioned to us to shop quickly.
“Leave, before the patrol comes by.”
Warsaw’s early winter announced itself,
harsh.
That night, on Twarda Street,
eight of us huddled in our flat.
Grandfather sang our Shabbat blessing.
My eleven-year-old cousin Dorota and I,
shared the orange, delicious, sweet,
golden by candlelight.
I will never forget our last
family Shabbat,
orange from Piotrek,
orange golden for Christmas.
Emma Alexandra
Note: Persona poem – The perspective of my cousin Ignacy Vogel imagined. The Vogel Family living in Warsaw perished during the WWII Holocaust
Jocelyn Ajami was a painter and filmmaker for over twenty years and founder of Gypsy Heart Productions. As an artist with a global perspective, Jocelyn has been the recipient of numerous awards, including major grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Leadership Foundation, International Women's Forum, and the Goethe Institute. In 2008 she served as an activist/grantee in Dublin, Ireland during the drafting of the international treaty banning cluster bombs. She turned to writing poetry in 2014 and has been published in several anthologies of prize-winning poems, including Encore (2018) in which her poem, Un Deseo, won the Founders Award/first prize, from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, she lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
Find me
In the hollow of your hand, clutching
fallen dreams
In the salt of your tears, burnishing
the wounds of old Seville
In the bristles of your broom
sweeping alleys
on the crescent of the moon
Find me
In the crystal bowl, galloping
through liquid chambers
In the speckled eel, coiling
like a dancer’s lunar train
In a child’s first breath at
the Banquet of Words
Find me
In the smallest worm, crawling
through the brambles
In the fragile caterpillar, propping
temples on common ground
In the burnt weed, floundering
on sacred mounds
Find me
at your feet, a solitary ant,
bewildered
by the commerce of devils
Find me
the desert pebble
on a snowcapped mountain
insignificant and bare
near the midnight border
of somewhere, Anywhere
We did not climb over a Wall,
not this time.
Mama had left her Warsaw Ghetto Wall,
buried deeply in the scars of her survivor’s guilt.
Papa had exiled Stalin’s Siberian Trenches,
drowned frozen in a distant subconscious.
Not this time, not in 1961,
this time, in 1961, papa, mama, and me,
we crossed an ocean.
Statue of Liberty greeted us with poetry.
Poetry, language we did not understand,
Mama, papa, and me.
Waves rocking our freighter ship deck whispered;
Mother of Exiles, New Colossus, says something about
“breathing free.”
Displaced Person, DP, Green Card, Greenhorn,
In fifth grade, I sang pho net i cal ly, to fit in, fit in.
E ven tu al ly, syllables arranged themselves into words.
Words into sentences, and understanding into
Spelling bees…
Eventually, this language no longer eluded me,
not, totally. And,
I sang,
“The land of the free and the home of the brave.”
At school, at home.
Our attic apartment resonated with the land of the free,
the home of the brave.
Sang to my brave mama, my brave papa.
Sang from deep in my heart.
Papa and mama nodded their heads, hummed along.
Hands on their hearts, hummed to a flag of yet another land,
this land, this final land,
free, brave.
Papa’s gravedigger’s hands, fingernails witness to cemetery soils,
right hand on his heart.
Mama’s cleaning woman’s aching back momentarily straightened,
right hand on her heart.
Tired, poor, huddled masses, breathing free.
Emma Alexandra
Poets & Patrons © 2017
For information contact Caroline Johnson