How to Make Hamantaschen for the Jew-Ish
First, you add the sugar and the eggs, and you whip until they’re fluffy.
No, first you preheat the oven to 350.
In a house where the rabbi sends you homemade hot sauce but tells you your mother converted too late for you to count,
it is not knowing the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew.
It is Googling why Adam Sandler sings about yarmulkes when you’ve always heard them called kippahs.
Second, as in most recipes, you add the wets: the oil, the lemon juice, the extract
In a house where you attended a bar mitzvah for your brother, where the Jewish mothers pulled your dress over your breasts but tell you that you ought not apply to birthright because you don’t count,
it is whether or not to add a C in Hanukkah.
It is why exactly you don’t write the O in G-d.
Third, you add in the dries, and you stir with never a metal spoon until the
dough is stiff.
In a bar one day, your more Jewish friend raises you high in a chair and gives you a bat mitzvah. You’re drunk, and you don’t know Hebrew.
Your mother is at home using a glass to cut holes in the dough. Someone told her she didn’t count once, too. Then, in a bath surrounded by friends, she counted. Now she is afraid of German people and cries at mention of the pile of shoes. You do, too, but it’s in a goyish way.
Fourth, you fill the dough with whatever fruit filling you choose and pinch it not all the way shut into either the shape of Haman’s ear or Esther’s vulva, whatever you believe.
In a house where your mother washed your dead grandmother’s stiff body – and true, you refused to help, opting to cry instead – and you are told you didn’t grow up Jewish,
it is buying dreidels because you feel compelled to but not because you’ll use them.
It is wanting your children to call you Ima before you even want children.
Fifth, you bake for 18-22 minutes.
In a house where your mother told you that for your Jewish wedding, you’d get henna on your feet, you don’t count.
So why don’t you just use cake mix?
***
The Day Is Bright, but the Drapes Have Blacked It Out
When I named myself, it was out of ego.
“Leota” is a lioness of the people,
and her name was found etched in a gravestone,
and I had hoped to wrap myself in that otherwordly, feline skin,
to bare my teeth and shake my mane atop a concrete soapbox
for diplomacy.
But I woke up, no cubs to mother, no podium from which to preach,
just panties on the floor—
groggy and human—
plain old breakable (broken) flesh,
plain old breakable (broken) hymen,
and my claws were retracted so far inside me
I think I’d coughed them up with my voice and my “No”s,
and my fur had been brushed out in clumps by soothing hands.
“You’re Beautiful,” Declares The Hunter, one hand on my fur and the otheron his pistol.
“It Will Be Good For You,” Promises The Taxidermist,
and somewhere on a wall I am on display,
midgrowl,
while here I am on a different kind of display,
midwhimper.
***
The Anatomy of Poetry
Spinning me in a tireswing and smoking a cigar, you tell me,
“This is great. I’m going to write a poem about this.”
I remind you every week,
ask to see what I hope is a proclamation of awe,
and you tell me it is not yet done.
A year passes,
and I continue to pick apart your rhyme,
but I am never in the scheme.
Playing tetherball in a sunflower field,
you tell me,
“I’m going to write a poem about this moment, but please don’t remind me.
I have a thing about that.
You kept reminding me about the other poem,
and so I could never write it
even though I really wanted to.”
so I am patient and silent
(things that do not come easy)
and your accidental lesson reaches me
because I wait for it to come,
but it never does.
I feign nonchalance when I read a poem that has a moment I recognize,
a phrase that captures an essence I acknowledge to be mine,
and I ask, “Oh, is that line about me?”
but it never is.
***
I Kissed a Woman and Killed a Man (and the Guilt I Feel Is Equal)
It breaks everyone’s fucking heart to know how many times they could havespilled it
but the phone just kept ringing,
and you can have swimming vision over dark beers all you want
or at least until 3 when they kick you out
and as the saying goes:
nothing good happens after 2.
So we should stop trying so hard to revel in our brokenness,
stop getting into each other’s cars and faces
and threatening to blacken our knuckles on each other’s teeth and jawlines.
We should listen to our mothers and go to bed.
You know someone matters to you when they start infiltrating your slurredspeech
and you start waking up drenched in sweat from your latest nightmareabout them
and you don’t know how to stop shaking when confronted with the gloryof their face,
and you are willing to crush their nose bone if it means you get to make upafterward.
Take a precious moment, spit on it, cover it in sand, then wonder whythey say you are all hammers.
Have no sympathy for their death toll, their Rorschach painting done in theirown blood, their wet eyelashes clumped together,
then scream in the parking lot of the bar that they never believed in your compassion
anyway.
Lila Bear was raised in Memphis, Tennessee, before moving to Denver, Colorado, to pursue stand-up comedy. She is a senior at Metropolitan State University in Denver and a freelance writer, though she really pays the bills by nannying. She sometimes babysits Josh Blue’s kids, which people think is much cooler than anything else she does.