Gahl Liberzon
July 2024
Gahl Liberzon is a writer, educator, and aspiring researcher in Long Beach, California. His work has appeared in The Museum of Americana and The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, and he has previously taught and performed throughout southeast Michigan, the greater Chicago area, and the greater Tokyo metropolitan area.
LOOKING UP MY OWN LAST NAME ON THE SHOAH VICTIMS DATABASE
Alive, I know eleven Liberzons. Here,
one hundred and ninety two.
My christian friend Addie was
visiting Israel and wanted to go
to Yad VaShem, the world's largest
holocaust museum. I was farther ahead
of her, so when I finished the main exhibits early,
I decided to use my extra time to indulge
a curiosity. I do not think about the holocaust much;
it ended 45 years before I was born. It is past.
I've never known myself to be upset by it.
I begin. Lea. Louis. Chana. I decide I will read each name
aloud, quietly, one by one. Ten names in,
I find my baby brother's name. I read it aloud.
I find my father's name. I read it aloud.
Yisrael. Yitzchak. Dvora. I read my uncle's name.
My grandfather's name. My great grandfather's name.
Piotr. Maya. Daniel. I read the names
of the woman who lived down the hall from me
freshman year, and her older brother the lawyer,
and the boy who used to sell them both drugs.
Hadasa. Yosef. Genya. I read the name
of the girl whose poem I heard and hated
in a hotel hallway in Philadelphia. And now
the name of a woman whom I had sex with
one drunken New Year's eve and regretted. And now
the woman with whom I first made love.
Anna. Kayla. Lev. I don't remember at what point
I start crying, just that it doesn't stop me. I read every name
I've even once thought of giving to children
of my own. What I would call a son, A daughter.
I read all the names my father thought of
giving my younger brother before he settled
on Jacob. Yakov. Yosef. Avraham. Eliezer.
Addie has finished touring. She sits next to me,
silent. I want her to say something to pull me
from this book of victims and the graveyards it makes
in me, but she says nothing. Her name is nowhere in there.
HERE
after Aracelis Girmay
Because it is a workshop,
and a title is just a title even if it’s not yours
because the rest of the poem is.
Say, look, this is the act of unraveling,
here is the start of crying without weeping,
of people asking if you’re okay
and not knowing the answer, here is
the aggravated cock
of your brother’s eyebrow
at the pervasiveness of lists
in Patrick Rosal’s workshops, here is
you trying to copy the poem and
thinking more about divorce than childhood
because childhood is never a poem,
always a fever dream, and poems
are about people and you’ve
spent too much time alone,
here is the yawning,
the stale bagel morning,
here is the day that anticipates the
storm and pushes you to lose
focus, here is the page that reminds
what you think you should be writing:
your mother, your father, alone,
the occasional guilt
at how happy you were
that they left each other.
Here is your mother alone,
crying herself into and out of work
Here is your father alone,
apologetic as he is volatile,
trying to impress you
with his interim apartment which
is always too warm and the bed
which is always too soft,
and he says its better
than your other bed
and you won’t argue Here
is your commute,
back and forth by bicycle,
it’s only a half mile but you’ve
gotten lost more times than you’d
like, coming back home and your baked macaroni
and cheese with bacon bits TV dinner, here is
your linguini alfredo with bell peppers
TV dinner, here is a TV dinner you spent
four and a half minutes ignoring as it boiled
don’t stop watching TV to notice what it is
you’re eating it is likely nothing new.
Here is couscous and some chicken,
here is couscous and some beef,
here is couscous and some %sh and
be nice because he likes couscous
and this is actual cooking and
don’t make him angry Here
is the first book of poetry,
with the rabbit in its hoodie
on the cover, and being so excited
and wanting to show it
to your dad, and here is
counting the number of happy poems
like your life depended on it
and throwing it away an hour later
and not understanding why, here is
listening to John Mayer and dad
telling you the music is too extreme and
what might be good to show him Here
is going back to mom’s and hearing her
apologize for bringing you late to school yesterday
morning because she just sort-of got lost
making coffee, and here is her cry that night
and going up and hugging her like she did you
and hoping its enough Here is going
to the Neutral Zone for breakdancing classes
and learning to hold your whole body in the air
with your hands, finding the balance where
you can lift anything if you hold your bones right,
and here is going to the Genyokan with Dad
for aikido, where you can pull someone
off the ground with your hands,
finding the balance where you can move anyone
anywhere if you just hold their bones right
And you start to wonder if you have enough hands
for so many bones.