Somerville poet Ben Berman writes The Somerville News:

“I thought, in honor of your Bagel Bards, I’d send along this poem.  I’d been reading some ghazals and was interested in how unity and disunity can be in conversation with one another in a poem. I thought it might be interesting to try to a write poem where the form and theme were connected throughout, but the subject matter and attitude varied.  The poem started with the “rhyme” of comedy and committee and developed forward and backward from there.”
*

Braided Rolls

As a kid, I hated it when our Rabbi
talked about sports – between bites of challah
he’d bring up ERA’s and RBI’s –

but I wanted him to be wholly
rabbinic – even chewing felt uncomely –
his tongue mucking up those braided rolls.

***

A colleague, who performs stand-up comedy,
has trouble breaking out of his routine –
he thinks of our recycling committee

as a small, attentive crowd to entertain –
rest, in his mind, must allude to the rest
of the show, the lines cut short by the curtain.

***

I live on the top floor of a three-story
building – above a Lebanese bakery
and yoga studio – when you take the stairs

you see women who smell like sweet carob
molasses, their limbs twisting like ribbons
as their teacher grumbles in Arabic.

– Ben Berman

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Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143.
dougholder@post.harvard.edu