+++I am the remnant for my mother’s
cousin Pearl, a totem standing
in the shoes she had worn

+++in my mother’s affections.
I’m not sure anymore how, of what
she died, or why her life justified

+++my mother’s firstborn. There’s no
one left to ask. All I know
is that my Hebrew name,

+++Penina, means pearl. So what kind
of legacy am I for her except
that I wear pearls and wax lyrical

+++over this name I carry
because of a dead woman
I never knew, and how it is only

+++now after mourning so many
of my own people, that I can claim
the name—not for its beauty,

+++but for its grit, turning months
of brooding on an irritant intruder
into iridescent treasure, a revenge

+++upon misfortune, writing layer
upon layer more lustrous,
to catch the changing light.

Click here to read Pamela Wax on the origin of the poem.

Image: Photo by Tiffany Anthony on Unsplash, licensed under under CC 2.0.

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Pamela Wax

Pamela Wax’s poems have received honorable mentions in the Paterson Literary Review Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize, and the Oberon Poetry Prize and have appeared (or are forthcoming) in journals including Artemis Journal, Pensive, Heron Tree, Green Ink Poetry, Sheila-Na-Gig, Pedestal, The Dewdrop, Naugatuck River Review, Sixfold, Solstice, Mudfish, The Cape Rock, Persimmon Tree, and Passengers Journal. Pam is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2022), her first book of poetry. She is a rabbi who walks labyrinths in the Bronx, NY and the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts. She can be found at www.pamelawax.com.

Latest posts by Pamela Wax (see all)

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