Frank. Funny. Poignant. Punchy.

- Naomi Nye, Board of Chancellors, American Academy of Poets

 

How do we know who we are? When you're a minority, everyone else likes to define you. When you're a little Jewish girl in 1960s Dallas, they tell you you're going to hell, your prayers are better, and you have perfect pitch -- and you wonder why they put your locker next to the locker of the only black kid in the class. Debra Winegarten's poems are sharp, sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, but always on the mark when it comes to our difficult understanding (and self-understanding) of difference. Her poems move through those childhood lessons in identity and survival to the loss of her mother and the inevitable dislocation such loss may create, exploring always our instinctual hungers for family, ritual, and tribe.

- Dr. Ed Madden, Associate Professor of English, University of South Carolina

Excerpt from
There's Jews in Texas?

Published by Poetica Magazine,
www.poeticamagazine.com

36 pages ISBN: 978-0-9836410-6-3

 

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Second Grade, Part Three

"That's an A-flat," I told my music teacher.
"That's middle C," I said, when she played the next note.
"That one's easy, it's G," I said,
My back turned to the keyboard as she hit the next ivory.

"You've got perfect pitch!" she said, excitement in her voice,
And told me to stay after class.
I thought I was in trouble for knowing the notes without looking.
After class, she told me, "It's a gift from God."

"It is?" I said. "Is it because I'm Jewish?"
"You are?" asked my Catholic music teacher.
"You have a special connection to God.
You can pray to Him directly."

"You can, too," I protested,
Secretly wondering how having perfect pitch
Gave me a direct line to God.