Issue 27: Burgess Needle
My Name is Needle
On the playground of my school
I was Needle in the sun
and shade beaten near the tree
my blood as red on asphalt
as if it mattered then
My family lit no candles
My father said we were a tribe
yet saw no need to pray or follow
Why do we have to be Needle
I asked Grandpa Harry
who slurped his borscht with gusto leaving
a trail of sour cream on his clipped mustache
his clean-shaven chin beaded with red drops
of beet juice that stained his shirt
Who laughed and sighed
better Needle than Nudel or Nodel
or even Noodle
He was a tailor and they were
all tailors, all those Nudels
And Nodels who somehow
Spun life from a common
thread handed them from
Cohen and Levy and Moses that was just as strong
As Ariadne’s string
that led from maze to sea
Stories came to me one by one
Stanzas from my people’s own great woe
Yitzhak of Bludow
breadwinner for Gitel
born in the Nudel clan
and like his father a tailor
All the gold in his teeth collected and melted
It seemed to me that over there
all the Nudels and Nodels
stitched clothing and sheets until
The thimbles fell and the wheels stopped turning
and then there were none
or too few to count
Someone later counted those piles
of shoes and divided the number by two
There was Josef Nodl
a tailor from Kremenets
or was it Krzeimieniec
Every decade seemed to change the word
changed the world
And whether Abram Nudl who married
Bila and died in Treblinka
alone because he was alone
Sewed shirts for the mayor
or peasants didn’t matter
because dead always meant dead
And the jumbled piles of clothing
along the railroad tracks remained unclaimed
These days his synagogue
is a bus station only
the old cemetery’s stones remain
Cracked tombstones with flowered motifs
one with a pitcher that meant
a Levite rested below
All on a hill overlooking the bustling town
Where no one can read Yiddish
inscriptions carved for the ages
Shlomo Nudel
Rachel Nudl
Saul Nodl
Decorated with
griffins, birds, bears and grapes
Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha‑olam, bo're p'ri ha‑gafen
Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, Who creates the
fruit of the vine.
On the playground of my school
I was Needle in the sun
And shade jumped petty hurdles
Compared to some then danced
With those who got away
A whirling gyre of freedom.
Doors and Windows
Screws dropped in sighed release.
Nine doors sagged, fell, were carried away.
The old truck’s springs groaned.
Lilac branches reached, but failed to slow the abduction.
Nine cracked and pitted doors stacked;
bound to be stripped in an acid wash
Their hinges flapped wagging tongues.
Slam! One still shudders in anger.
Creak! Another opens for love.
Who now remembers all their entrances
and exits, the slinking in
or the stumbling out?
Dumb, two-way glass windows remain.
They shared everything, both ways, of life’s drama:
kisses, slaps, embraces, lingering despair,
creative ecstasy and slow death.
They are free of memory and collective guilt.
Look in, look out, blood on the floor, scream
sounds filter through, but no evidence.
Only the doors retain in flaked lead deposits
centuries of you, us and them.
In the acid wash it will all be stripped
decades and days of human imprint
swirl clockwise down and away forever.
Watching wide-pine doors being driven away
the mute, neutral windows
resolute in rippled pane silence
Catch the image of the truck’s tail light
Flicker then go blank.
Burgess Needle was born in Boston and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand. He worked as a school librarian in Tucson for thirty years. His poetry has appeared in Connotation Press, Blackbox Manifold (UK), Concho River Review, Raving Dove, Iodine, Blue Lake Review, Nutshell (UK), Liquid Imagination and DeComp among others.
Publications include: Every Crow in the Blue Sky (Diminuendo Press, 2009); Thai Comic Books (Big Table Press, 2013); Faded Photo Brings it Back (Kindle, 2014) and Sit and Cry: Two Years in the Land of Smiles (Wren Song Press, 2017). He lives not too far from Middlebury, Vermont with a hazel-eyed woman of wit, charm and beauty.
Copyright © 2022 by Burgess Needle, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
