On the drive home, my aunt remembers moving to Indiana,
how she was the first Jew for some of her colleagues,
One asked if I had horns, wanted to see
where I was hiding them. She touches the hamsa
on her red bracelet. For the entire ride south of Chicago,
the fields are flat, small trees push up through burnt grass,
a tender eruption. Do you have horns? To my daughter
the plane of reality is budding with possibility: a Jewish unicorn,
sparkles, uninterrupted love. Her older sister answers a riddle
no one asked, A unicorn without a horn is just a quiet horse.
Their banter reminds me of a different night back in Queens,
driving past a menagerie of inflated dreidels, a bear
in a yarmulke, a giant menorah, a white and pink horse,
a run of lit candles like horns across its back. Ridiculous.
You have to smile at the audacity, the light’s persistence
nuzzled against the night’s skin to say I am here.
My aunt traces the edges of her Magen David, presses
its points into her fingers, pink with indents
before the skin rises back to fill the space.
–
Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023). He is the co-editor of Poets of Queens 2 (Poets of Queens, 2024). His work can be found at AGNI, Baltimore Review, Image Journal, River Mouth Review, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor at The Weight Journal and managing editor of Porcupine Literary. He is a teacher who lives in Queens, NY, with his wife and two daughters.