INEKE’S STORY

 Edythe Haendel Schwartz

The Nazis block our food supplies.

The farmers’ cows are dry.

What’s left from fall–withered apples,

weightless cabbage, dried up peas.

The farmers’ cows are dry.

So much depends upon a cart

to fill with cabbage, apples, peas,

a cart my father builds.

So much depends upon a cart

to fill with what will nourish us, this cart

my father builds from my old bicycle–

rusty rims, hollow space–workable.

To fill the hollow with what nourishes,

we walk from dawn to dusk, propel the cart,

its wobbly hollow full of goods to barter:

mother’s damask tablecloth, her dishes.

Dawn to dusk, we push the cart

down farmers’ lanes, ask “Have you peas to trade

for mother’s damask tablecloth, her Delft?”

I need carrot peels to feed my cows, one pleads.

‘Have you potatoes, then?”  No   ‘Some grains?”  No

Eggs?    No    Milk?   No    Perhaps a heel of bread?

I need peels to feed my cows, he groans.

We eat our peels. We eat dried tulip bulbs.

Eggs?   No    Milk?   No    A bit of bread?  No

What’s left from fall: withered apples.

We eat the peels. We eat dried tulip bulbs,

The Nazis block our food supplies.

Edythe Haendel Schwartz is the author of two poetry collections, A Palette of Leaves (Mayapple Press), and Exposure (Finishing Line Press). Her poems appear widely in journals and anthologies including Faultline, Potomac Review, Cave Wall, and The Southern Review, among others.