Ezra Becoming Kosher

Eleanor Stanford

What's memory but a shucked oyster,

salt rimed and shivering?

At one and a half,

he pointed at the ceiling fan, said

rotate, as though his mouth was origin

of some first turning.

So many rules to be a Jew,

my mother sighs, leaving behind

Long Island, Flatbush, Yiddishkeit.

Ezra, balanced between the past

and a tender pork roast, puts down

his fork.

What's memory but an omnivorous（杂食的）

shadow, cloven-hoofed?

Whose memory? Not mine.

Between what my mother won't cop to,

and what my son won't eat, I'm half-invisible,

half-confused.

Already, at nine, he retreats behind his too-long

bangs and Bach inventions.

And my mother, the hard bead of Ashkenazi

irony in her left breast cut out, radiated, her Judaism, too,

now in full remission.

Memory, relentless bottom-feeder,

gatherer of refuse and debris --

And Ezra, turning

away, knowing: thou shalt not cook the calf

in its mother's milk; the animal should be bled

swiftly and just so, prayers said thus

over its bowed head.