Category: Tova Hinda Siegel

National Poetry Month 2023: Day 27

On By angeliquejamailIn literature, National Poetry Month, poetry, Tova Hinda Siegel2 Comments

Today I’m sharing a poem by Tova Hinda Siegel, whose work I first encountered during the PoetrySuperHighway’s Great Poetry Exchange one year. I’m thinking about home these days: what it means, how it functions, and what it means to leave and come back to it. I’m also thinking about what it means to be a writer, and how one accomplishes that in the face of a thousand other tasks.

Not Writing about Home

I search for the poem
just as I searched for my mother,
sick in her giant bed. My father slept 
next to her, his snoring
reliable as Montreal winter. Days filled 
with bitter snow and blinding cold
melted by the glow in the fireplace.

I search for the sounds and smells that
will grow into words to fill the page.
Bubby’s chocolate cake drifting
through the walls,
the Shabbos dinners raucous with laughter,
the original-of-its-kind dishwasher, 
cranking and buzzing
(my father always the first with the latest).
The TV in my mother’s room drones into the night; 
the antiseptic stench of her illness
mixes with the aroma 
of half eaten chocolates on her bed.

Like a doomed species
the pages refuse 
to evolve. Stubborn and obstinate
like the child I was in those days.
My piano teacher fled 
crying when I refused to practice,
smugly victorious.
So willful, I almost failed 8th grade, 
homework cast aside,
my chances as a ballerina evaporated 
because I chose a boyfriend’s visit over an audition.
Immediate pleasure over long term gain.
I would give birth to a poem, 
stubborn and obstinate, 
like me.

I try to revisit that place. 
The warmth of the winter rooms, 
the sound of my father 
improvising at the organ,
my brother’s incessant violinning,
but the door opens 
only briefly, teasing me
with hints of what’s remembered,
then closes once again
leaving me 
outside.

***

Tova Hinda Siegel, a writer/poet, is a midwife, cellist, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother of many children living around the world. After earning a BA from Antioch and an MS from USC, she began writing and has studied with Jack Grapes, Tresha Faye Haefner, Taffy Brodesser-Akner among others. Her work has appeared in Salon.com, I’ll Take Wednesdays, On The Bus, MacQueens’s Quinterly, Gyroscope Review, Poetry SuperHighway, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Better than Starbucks, and several anthologies. Her first collection, Uncertain Resident, was published recently. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

National Poetry Month: Tova Hinda Siegel

On By angeliquejamailIn family, National Poetry Month, parenting, poetry, Tova Hinda SiegelLeave a comment

I received the gift of Tova Hinda Siegel’s Uncertain Resident in the mail during this year’s PoetrySuperHighway Great Poetry Exchange, and Siegel has graciously agreed to let me feature some of her work on my blog during National Poetry Month.

As for her poem “Dishes of Life,” all I can say is that the humor and poignancy blend perfectly, and I totally feel seen.

 

Dishes of Life

The kitchen is now clean.
I gird myself for the inevitable battle
that I do constantly
with my husband and my children.
How many times have I explained the importance –
no –
the virtue of placing the bowls
in the back left of the dishwasher first?
Then and only then,
any overflow will go into the front left.
Unless of course the surplus of plates
has to go there
when the front right side is filled.
Plates must be lined up,
one per slot, barely needing a rinse
because of my foresight
in buying a dishwasher which rinses first.
But it may still have the odor of old food,
so I insist on the door closed.
The glasses must be placed
between the pegs, not on them.
Again, efficiency in mind
and use of space maximized.
I’ve repeated this important lesson so many times
but it goes unheeded.
The deep bowls are perfectly suited
for the back right
where the slots are much wider.
They do not go on the top shelf
which is where
not only glasses go
but also anything plastic
because you know the plastic will melt
if placed on the bottom near the heating coil.

But you don’t know
And I’m always moving the stuff around
because you’ve all refused
to take that extra minute
to keep it organized and moving smoothly.
So I do.
And then I feel accomplished
as if I have just completed a
vital task which will keep
me and my family
in shape
for at least another day, maybe two
because there’s never enough dishes
to run the dishwasher every day.
But they never learn the lesson
no matter how often I teach it.
And the dishes lay at odds with each other
in total disarray, disharmony and disgust
and I am the only one who cares about
the order of life.

***

Tova Hinda Siegel, a writer/poet, is a midwife, cellist, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother of many children living around the world. After earning a BA from Antioch and an MS from USC, she began writing and has studied with Jack Grapes, Tresha Faye Haefner, and Taffy Brodesser-Akner, among others. Her work has appeared in Salon.com, I’ll Take Wednesdays, On The Bus, MacQueens’s Quinterly, Gyroscope Review, PoetrySuperHighway, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Better than Starbucks, and several anthologies. Her first collection, Uncertain Resident, was published recently. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.