Connections

The people who are connected to us—ancestors, family, friends—inevitably leave their mark on us, and the three poems in our July issue speak to those effects. Julia Kolchinsky’s intricate “Puzzle Pieces” examines complicated inheritances from one generation of her family to another. “The Eleventh Street Irregulars,” by Eric Paul Shaffer, is a spirited, gently funny reminiscence about a group of young men whose friendship keeps them afloat. In “Soup” Jared Harél recalls an indelible memory of his grandfather, revealing a tragic past and an enduring character. You can listen to recordings of the poems by clicking the buttons below.

Take care and read well,
Nancy Holochwost, Associate Editor

Puzzle Pieces
By Julia Kolchinsky

My son holds my nose between his thumb and pointer finger, 
or rather, a cardboard piece bearing my nose’s image. He brings 
its bigness close to his own—button, the nurses called his
when he was born in the City of Brotherly Love. That nose,
cute as a button, a subtle slope he got from his Midwest-born father,
who gave him his flat feet and sharp temper, taught him to name 
wood by its scent and pattern—cedar, oak, balsa, locust—to count 
beer cans when they overflow the recycling bin, and to stop
reaching for me on the days we’re apart now that our time is split 
like the crab apple in front of the last house 
where his father and I shared a bed as husband and wife.
My son stares at the puzzle piece and squeezes, then looks down 
at the half-formed picture below, like a print in a darkroom 
whose traces are just coming into view. His father’s full, open mouth 
is laughing against the uncontainable green of summer grass, arms wide 
around his children and their mother, who is turned to look at him, her nose 
all the more prominent in profile, hair wild and Jewish as ever, the children
delighted at being there together, a family, and even though the mountain- 
blue sky and our chests and my right arm are mostly gaps showing the dark
mahogany of the table below, my son knows he has all the pieces he needs 
to fill in the clouds and our bodies. He places the misshapen square 
in the hole of my face—how easy to complete, to mend us, to turn 
what was missing into what is found. Perhaps this is why puzzles
never fit my hands—too many holes in my ancestral past, all those missing 
dead on what was once Soviet soil, limbs and names, pieces I knew 
I’d never find in the Ukrainian earth of my birthplace. My children inherited  
the patience for puzzles from their father, but the certainty 
that what we shatter with our own hands
can be put back together, that was never his to give. 

The Eleventh Street Irregulars
By Eric Paul Shaffer

On any temporary sunny day in the valley, none of us had much
money, but my friends complained about the cheap beer I bought,
the Lucky Lager, the Old Milwaukee, the PBR,
yet still I filled the rusted fridge with cans and brown bottles.

“Life’s too short for cheap beer,” one gazing into the lightless chill
would growl, but we knew better and cracked another.
The sun was going down, and we knew that too.

From the street’s dead end, slumped on the couch, tired
after long afternoons restoring the decrepit boat, we watched trains
pass and deciphered riddles in bottle caps we twisted free
with empty hands and our ready, useless strength.

Nobody loved my car, either, a used Plymouth Champ
of babysplat brown graced with a sporty black stripe and an engine
that ran and ran and ran. My mother gave me,

gave me, that car, as she gave me the life I was happily wasting.
She knew I had no wheels and thought I might eventually
need to get somewhere. My friends often found my car—
with inexplicably pulsing combustion in a cadence like breathing,

and lacking cool or charm—useful in an emergency, for a task,
a chore. Or sometimes the car was amusing, as on the morning,
after driving one of us downtown for court, I stopped

at a traffic light beside a police car. The Champ,
panting at the pause, suddenly sounded its horn, announcing,
in a way I never could, Hey, I’m here! When the cop, inscrutable
behind dark lenses, turned to me, I raised my hands

in the universal gesture of I have no idea. His badge glinted
as he chuckled. The light turned, and, shaking his head, the law
drove on into another life, and, with a sigh of relief, so did I.

On long evenings, our dogs slept at our feet, and the boat gleamed,
pale beneath a tree someone had planted decades ago for future shade.
Keel to the stars, raised on sawhorses, the hull was sanded, ready
for paint, misadventure, and the Sacramento. Like all men

of no particular use, looking for work and finding only jobs,
we told stories at dusk, sitting on the couch, the porch,

the steps, laughing as loudly and often as the tale demanded.
Life, we decided, was good—or, at least, remarkably better
than the alternative. There was, after all, the river,
and a boat to restore and someday launch onto the muddy flow.

So we spent our days and dollars together, and no matter what else,
there was always beer to drink and always a car
to borrow or a ride to a place we needed to go.

Soup
By Jared Harél

At the restaurant with white linens 
and candles in glass cups, I remember,
my grandfather sent back the soup.

A bit chilly, he said. So he sent it back. 
Beside his daughter and grandkids, 
he sent it back. His parents and sisters

murdered. He sent back the soup. 
He had survived three death camps,
subsisted on crusts and peelings and fear.

Then one evening, in his eightieth year,
my grandfather slurped, then sent back 
the soup. I was eleven years old

and did not understand. How could 
anyone care about the temperature 
of soup, having endured no soup, no

hope, for so long? There was warm bread 
at the center of the table. Some soft, 
forgettable music floated through the air.


To send it back. To trust what a menu 
and a waiter had promised. To believe
still in promises. In anything at all.