Emma Wynn

At the Jewish Deli

Bowls of pickled vegetables in every booth

not just cucumbers but green tomatoes 

like hunks of jade, the bone china vases 

of pearl onions and rinds of humble cabbage 

flecked with dill, sometimes even a beet 

trailing pink plasma like a star

that’s how you know this is no tourist trap

this bowl of mysteries

Papa Joe with his rabbi’s beard

forking out whole cloves of garlic 

for my father and me

our eyebrows thick, noses majestic 

as the prows of ocean liners crossing the Atlantic 

from Romania to Brooklyn

how aching the flood behind my teeth 

as it rises dripping from the brine

the translucent fruit of some far garden

thrown scalded into the tight darkness

to be made this sharp, this nourishing

as imperishable as we are