after In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy
from the Women of Terezin
They dream of yeast and goose fat, dough plaited to dough,
the old women of Theresienstadt.
Linzer torte, pirogen, goulash
with noodles.
Under the dead stars,
beside the stunned windows,
the blank belly of the stove.
They argue about hazelnuts in chocolate cake,
whether ground or chopped.
Whose version of coffee caramels.
From freezing bunks at night, they lament Krieg—
the food substitutes of war—
ersatz coffee, honey, egg optional in the strudel.
Someone calls for her favorite galantine of chicken,
garnished with caviar and paprika.
They press poems between the recipes. Letters,
Yahrzeit notes for the dead,
thread the pages to a book, hide it like a stolen loaf.
The daughter into whose hands years later
a stranger presses this parcel
trembles to touch it—
cries of apricot, apples, the small mouths of berries.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 2.
A retired counselor, Dianne Stepp lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies including High Desert Journal, TAMSEN.org, Comstock Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Cries of the Spirit. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program in Poetry, she is a recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship and author of a chapbook, “Half-Moon of Clay.”
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