My little brother helped me hit America, but I helped him quit Poland first. That time, there was no way to leave without becoming a Communist, or I didn’t know how. Desperate to leave, I wrote scholars, called philosophers, and wrote letters in any language I could crack, seducing pen pals.
envelope
my hand
her pocket
I had always been a k’nacker, Yiddish for “show-off,” at knocking off a killer missive. Lovers begged me to sing their love. “Make her fall for me,” a lover would whine. “Break her heart as she had mine.” So, I did. “If I get you, I get a future,” I would write, for instance. “If I don’t, I don’t even get a past.” I fooled folks to fall for each other, and then, I watched them walk wounded, weak, lovesick. It felt good. I loved to write like a lover. And like Srulik, the Sholom Aleichem’s hero, I brought lots of lovers together while getting more and more lonely myself.
shoemakers
go shoeless
lovers loveless
One day I got a letter from Israel, Mama called. She shipped it in a rogaleh package. Mama baked great rogaleh — crunchy, cheesy, sugar-dusted with poppy-seeds. I was dying to sink my teeth in the baked goods, but even more in the letter. But it wasn’t to be — a thief cut a hole, ate the goodies, and stole the letter. All I got was a box full of smell. The girl’s name was Dorota Jakubowicz, Mama recalled. I traveled to Israel twice, but I never found her.
rushing creek
log stuck
spinning
About the same time, a perfumed letter came from a 16-year-old girl, Missy, living in Sacramento. I had dreamed of seducing an American girl, but here, one was seducing me. Pure angel, godsend. I couldn’t believe my luck. But I couldn’t get her, either — she was too green, too babyish. So, instead, I knocked off a killer letter and signed my brother’s name.
Mario and Missy hit it off right from the go. Soon, Missy, now legal, flew in to visit. Then, she flew in again – this time, to marry Mario and quit together. Payback time had arrived. Once in America, Missy fired off a missive to the Polish cops to set me free.
my hand
flowering, an old
love letter
Tad Wojnicki’s work has appeared in Simply Haiku, Contemporary Haibun, bottle rockets, Frogpond, Poetry Midwest, ZYZZYVA, Tattoo Highway, and Rainbow Curve, among others, and anthologies like: AutoBioDiversity: True Stories from ZYZZYVA, ed. by Howard Junker; In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief, ed. by Amy Ouzoonian; and Taboo Haiku, ed. by Richard Krawiec. Tad is the author of a novel, Lie Under the Fig Trees, and a poetry chapbook, Where Angels Catch Hell. Overseas on sabbatical, he currently he teaches Steinbeck and Bukowski in subtropical Taiwan.
