Two Unpublished Authors Await Publication Poem by Charles Chaim Wax

Julia Doyle arrived at Spinoza HS
with visions of creating a real Community
and to that end she announced
all submissions from the faculty
would be published in the school’s
literary magazine.
One day in the Teacher’s Center
Minna Cohen asked Julia,
“When’s the magazine coming out? ”
“Soon...but I didn’t understand a word.”
I immediately said, “Julia, you promised us
we’d get published.”
“I thought Minna would do a love story.”
“Not much love the last decade, ” she said
“Imagination, Minna. You’ve got that…
at least I hope so…
no writer can function without it.”
Minna muttered, “You said I’d make it
no matter what, just no dirty words
that’s what you said.
I need this…
just stick it in…
anyplace.”
Julia stared at Minna saying, “You’re in.”
”Thank God.”
“But Auschwitz? for a student magazine?
and so confusing, the entire story
a six page monologue of mixed up words.”
“I can see that because the narrative’s
part of a larger work I’ve been writing
for the last eleven years
about the life of Hannah Greenberg,
a doctor and survivor of Auschwitz
who went mad thirty years
after her incarceration. The Death Camp
deposited a time bomb in her soul.”
“But, Minna, you only gave the insanity.”
“How about my story? ” I asked blurted out.
“A fat man’s saga into stroke.”
“Yes.”
“I expected humor, after all
you’re a funny guy.”
“Not all fat men are funny, ” I said,
more bitterly than I intended.
“Yes, I’m sorry, but the entire tale
is uniformly dismal, yet I felt no sadness…
sorry, Bernstein, but…
why didn’t he just stop eating? ”
“Insanity, ” said Minna, her voice
so soft, so calm, but with such certainty,
“still here
now
the whole world.”