Monday nothing, Tuesday nothing, Wednesday a little more nothing.
--Tuli Kupferberg

Tuli Kupferberg and I are dancing.
He is light-years ahead of me,
Maybe old as twenty.
I myself cannot be
Many moons past eight.

We aren't holding hands exactly,
Only our fingertips touch.
They are sticky. We've been noshing
Messy chunks of halvah,
Melting chocolate gelt.

Mr. Slowpoke, my uncle Phil,
Fresh from a stretch in eternity,
Roller-skates across the floor
On wheels of salted bagels.
"Kam mit tsores!" he calls to us,

And time, the way it does in dreams,
Whirls by, dreidel-like,
Revealing all its sides
To me.

I am... I am distracted by
Kaleidoscopic visions
And winks from my mind's eye.

Tuli, meanwhile, is spieling
His nada, his gornisht, his nothing.

I am turned around.

Cracked and scratched beyond repair,
One of my favorite 78s
Is skipping like mad past all the best parts,
Bucking the needle at every turn,
Knocking it out of the groove.

Peggy Landsman grew up near New York City and always spent a lot of time there. The first poetry reading she ever took part in was at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. Her writing has appeared in both online and print publications, including Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (C&R Press), Iodine Poetry Journal, The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press), and Spindle. Her poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo, is available from FootHills Publishing. She has also published a contemporary romance novel, Passion's Professor (Midnight Showcase), under the pen name, Samantha Rhodes.

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Keywords : Halvah, Childhood

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