Rooftop Poetry Club - Barbara Holender

Barbara Holender

Bio:
Barbara D. Holender, Buffalo poet, is the author of four books of poetry and a children’s book in Hebrew. Her poems and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and many of them have been set to music.

Poems:

Stars

when they fall
let go
plunge screaming
down the sky

(Astronomers
and astrophiles
with their telescopes
say Ahhh say Look!
and chart their calculations)

Does no one hear them
in their desolation
crying gone
gone
gone

Why I Apologized To The French

in French.
Because, having studied the language
seulement pour le voyage
I felt obliged to use it when, for example,
I leapt into the last remaining parking space
in the village on market day
with a grand screeching of gears
and a helpless stalling stop and caught sight
of the startled faces of two men
hanging over an adjacent balcony.
I graciously explained to them:
J’nai pas l’ habitude de conduire a main vitesse.*
As if they didn’t know...

Similarly it came in handy when I made
the only known projectile entry into the Paris Metro.
Still prone I retrieved my hat, scrambled into a seat,
elegantly crossed my legs to hide the ladder
in my stocking, and with great dignity
informed the sea of impassive faces
that I hadn’t the habitude of falling into the Metro.

When one’s behavior lacks gravitas
it behooves one to aquire an air of insouciance.
I felt behooved, yes indeedy,
behooved as anything, which is why
I stopped apologizing and dealt with my errors,
having a perfectly beautiful accent
and a very limited grasp of the language,
and held my tongue when my $75 ticket for Corsaire
turned out to be a concert version of Giulio Cesare.

C’est la vie and all that.

*I’m not used to a manual shift