*

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Peacock Journal, Southern Women’s Review, etc. Her book, This Body, was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook, Riot Wake, by Cervena Barva Press, and her story collection, Distractions En Route, by Ibbetson Street Press. She is also the editor of Constellations a Journal of Poetry and Fiction, constellations-lit.com.

BINGO July 11, 2009

Nina Rubinstein Alonso

He shouts numbers
With a hand mike
Like an old-time emcee
“N-twelve, G thirty seven”
And the elders

Hunch over their boards
Placing blue bubbles
With intensity, with care

Except for Mom. She
Smiles at me and says
“It’s like seeing
My face in the mirror,”
Which rattles me,
Frightens me, confuses me,
She is so old, how can
She be me?

Her board sits untouched
As she can’t hear the voice
Shouting “B-thirty one”
And can’t quite see which
Numbers are on her card.

“It’s Yontiff,” she tells me,
“And God gives
But it’s up to us
What we do with
What he gives,”

Then asks, “Do you
Have a scissors
So I can cut the top
Off my turtleneck?”
She’s hot, but no,
Doesn’t want
To change clothes.

She warns me twice
About “contamination,”
“Where?” I say, “Where?”

She points to a gray lady across the room,
Hunched over her bingo board
Like sacred text, and Mom says slyly,
“She’s my daughter.”
“Bingo,” the lady says, “Bingo.”

“But I’m your daughter,” I say,
“I know, but she is too,” is the answer,
As her soft eyes roam the room
Showing who else
She lays claim to.

“Today is Yontiff,
And it is love, love, love, love,
L-O-V-E all day,”
And I agree, I agree,
But how to save
My heart, pulled
Out of my chest, stung
With her stainless knife,
Labelled L-O-V-E?

— Nina Rubinstein Alonso

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