“Grandma weeps. The angel of the breathing machine industriously drones a rhythmic song. In the hallway the nurses shout. beyond the window I see roofs of ugly buildings gnawing at the sun until it is no more.”

“The schmaltz, the Jew, the wife…We really are a special people, aren’t we, my friends? You just can’t compare any other nation to us Jews. We’re the chosen People! God had other options, but he picked us!”

“In a house empty and cold like a Beckett play / The children, bubbling like Coca Cola, / Were shuttered behind the door. / Her breaking point shattered like a bell jar. / Now I close my eyes and nurse a hidden dream behind rose eyelids.”

“We spoke in the plural. That’s how we were born, that’s how we grew up, forever. Our horizons were strange, bent.”

“She didn’t hear the whole Haftorah because the window was full of birds that flew to faraway countries and the skies were clouded, and Clara cried into her embroidered handkerchief until her mother jabbed her with her elbow and whispered in her ear, but she didn’t understand what her mother was saying.”