Ghouls, all of them. Staring directly at me. A skein of skulls. Unravel the strands and they reveal
themselves. There’s Esther Toby next to her husband, Chaim Joseph with the gouged-out eyes.
She peels the potatoes. He cuts the onions since he can no longer cry. There’s Joseph Chaim and wife, Chana, who prepare parsnips and carrots. Butchers Zelig and Henoch kosher the flanken. My father, who always had a good head of hair, shakes salt and pepper. My mother sprinkles paprika on her father. He wanted her to change the world. She wanted to change her hairstyle. Bryna oversees the entire enterprise and slides in chicken fat here and there. Into the stew they all go, with a healthy dose of DNA, mix, stir, braise, boil. I take a good hearty ladleful and say, Now that’s a stew to stick to the ribs.

Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet of ten collections, including Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (Dancing Girl Press, 2026), and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), and Memory Collector (Kelsay Books, 2027).