The Best American Poetry

Milton Berle (by Mitch Sisskind)

Young lady, does the name Milton Berle
Have any particular significance for you? 
Does the name Milton Berle ring a bell?
I thought not, so I've got news for you.
Milton Berle in the early 1950s almost
Single-handedly multiplied the number 
Of American television sets from only
500,000 to 26 million of the boob tubes;
Without Milton Berle there would be 
No television as we know it, let alone
The TikToc, FlipTop, or what have you.
Alas, the wheel of life is ever turning.
You know nothing of Milton Berle. 
How about Cosmo Iacavazzi?

Interpretation of Dreams (by Mitch Sisskind)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of whomsoever you dream 
That person is also dreaming
Of you which is called the
Law of reciprocal dreaming!

"Oh, I dreamed of this person
"Or that person but they have
"No memory of me because
"We only met once or twice!" 

But the law of reciprocal dreaming 
Proves the wrongheadedness of 
Your argument and stands it on its
Head because the opposite is true! 

Even if you dream of a dead person
They can still dream of you through
The process of somniculosus mortem
No matter how long they've been dead!

Serendipity (by Mitch Sisskind)

Gramps applies unguentine
and a mixture of baking soda 
and super glue with desenex
and cera-vu moisturizing lotion 
over lidocaine with benadryl 
vitamin e vitamin c zinc and
what have you nothing works
until by chance in a little
side drawer in the bathroom 
looking for something else
he discovers an old tube of
rite-aid brand cortisone-based 
anti-itch cream that had never 
been opened. what are the odds!

 

from "Duke Rhino," a work in progress [by Mitch Sisskind]

Every morning the Chicago Tribune was delivered
outside the kitchen door, on the landing beside the
stairs and the freight elevator. Everything about the
stairs and the freight elevator fascinated me, but I
had never investigated how the newspaper arrived.
A deliveryman must have ridden the freight elevator
in the early morning with a stack of Tribunes, stopping
at every floor that had a newspaper subscription. It
must have taken a fair amount of time, considering
the slow speed of the freight elevator. But I had never
looked into it. 

If my mother woke early, or if she had not slept at all,
she brought the newspaper inside. If she stayed late
in bed, Catherine would get it. But since Catherine
didn’t come on weekend mornings, and my father
never got the newspaper, I got it on Saturdays and
Sundays. 

On Saturday, October 5, 1957, I saw the front page
of the Tribune and immediately realized that everything
would be different from now on. The headline – REDS
FIRE MOON INTO SKY – was brilliant, terrifying,
deeply meaningful and incomprehensible all at once.
The accompanying article was more of the same:
“At 560 miles high, it spins five miles a second.”
What could that mean?

Alone in the breakfast nook, I continued staring at the
Tribune. Gradually I became aware of other articles
on the front page. There was something about game
three of the World Series. What foolishness. How
could anyone care about baseball when everything
was completely changed? 

I wanted to listen to Radio Moscow immediately. I had
never done that by myself. With Murr, my friend from
the sixth floor, I listened to Radio Moscow on the
huge mahogany contraption in the living room. Besides
its tiny television screen, the contraption had a phonograph
and a powerful radio with shortwave capability that could
access Radio Moscow’s English language broadcasts.
Listening was scary. Suppose the FBI found out? 

My father entered the breakfast nook. Saturday was a
favorite day for him. For thirty years, since the late 1920s,
he had played pinochle on Saturdays with the same small
group of friends. Originally there were three of them: Gus
Golding, Joe Weiss, and Charlie Shapiro. Gus Golding
had died a few years ago so now they played three-handed
pinochle. Winter or summer, they never missed a Saturday
game. It was an impressive accomplishment because
Charlie Shapiro lived in LaPorte, Indiana, almost a two hour
drive away. He must have picked up Joe Weiss somewhere
along the route because they always came together, and
they always arrived at exactly one o’clock. 

“Something wrong?” my father asked. I was standing beside
the Formica table staring down at the newspaper. 

“Have a look.” 

I stepped aside and he read the headline. I didn’t expect much
of a reaction. My father followed the news closely although he
rarely seemed engaged unless Israel was involved. But he
seemed to understand the significance of REDS FIRE MOON
INTO SKY. 

“It’s a good thing Stalin is gone.”

“Stalin? What about Khrushchev?”

“Better than Stalin.”

I wasn’t ready to talk. It was still early on this grim Saturday
morning. Walking down the long hall, I passed the blue room
where my mother was still sleeping. What would she make
of the earth satellite? Probably nothing. If she was feeling
well enough, she would go with Dorothy on another hunt for
ceramic figurines. 

Instead of going to my room, I went into the cedar closet, with
its wood scent and darkness. I could think about anything in the
cedar closet. I could face the truth. 

I thought of Invasion USA, a movie Victor and I had seen at the
Parkway theater. Suddenly the Russians had invaded America.
The guy washing the windows turned out to be a Russian spy.
Formations of Russian bombers were flying in over Alaska. The
Russians were efficient and ruthless. They easily took over
America. All would have been lost except the whole thing turned
out to be the hallucination of a guy in a bar. 

But this was not a hallucination. The Russians were taking over
and they didn’t need an army or an air force. They would do it
with satellites and rockets. How would that happen? Surely the
details would soon become clear. 

As I left the cedar closet the sounds of the pinochle game in the
library were loud and clear. I knew nothing about pinochle but it
seemed to involve numbers angrily shouted out. “Three-fifty!”
“Four hundred!” From the doorway of the library I saw that the
World Series was on the television, but with the sound muted.
Yes, they did this a few times a year, for World Series games
and for the Kentucky Derby. What foolishness! 

“Three-fifty!” “Four-hundred!”

from "Duke Rhino," a work in progress (by Mitch Sisskind)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bedlington terrier

Rabbi Frankenstein was a real person. It seemed impossible
that anyone could be named Frankenstein but there he was. 

Rabbi Frankenstein visited our apartment several times a year
to ask for a donation to the temple. He always brought a gift for
me, a small ceramic dog, and it was never the same kind of dog.
The World Book Encyclopedia had several pages in color showing
the different breeds of dogs so I always knew the breeds that Rabbi
Frankenstein brought. But I had never spoken up about it, I just
said thank you.

Talking with Rabbi Frankenstein was hard because of his name
and also because he had a glass eye. But now that I was in seventh
grade, I was starting to feel more confident about certain things. For
example, I used to be frightened of getting stuck in the freight elevator,
which had once happened to my mother and me, but now I liked
getting stuck in the freight elevator. I even knew how to make it get
stuck. So the next time Rabbi Frankenstein came over and gave me
a ceramic dog, I said, “Thank you for the Bedlington terrier.”

This happened at the start of the long hall near the guest bathroom.
My father and Rabbi Frankenstein were on their way to the library where
my father would write a check. Outside the door of the guest bathroom
the Rabbi took the ceramic dog out of his pocket, smiled, and handed
it to me. Usually he didn’t say anything when he gave me a ceramic
dog but this time, when I mentioned the Bedlington terrier, he turned
to my father and said, “A smart boychik you’ve got here.” 

Then he said to me, “How did you know it’s a Washington terrier?”

“Bedlington.”

“How did you know?”

“I just knew.”

I knew it was a Bedlington terrier because they look like
a sheep. No other dog looks as much like a sheep as a
Bedlington terrier. I had never seen one in person, I had
just looked closely at the picture in the World Book
Encyclopedia. But I didn’t want to go into all that with
Rabbi Frankenstein. I just held the ceramic Bedlington
terrier in my hand and felt sorry for it because it had been
in Rabbi Frankenstein’s clutches. There were other dogs
that were still in his clutches but at least some of them
would eventually be free because Rabbi Frankenstein
showed up two or three times a year. 

from "Duke Rhino," a work in progress (by Mitch Sisskind)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Groucho Marx

I was friends with the kids in my school and with the kids in
our building, but my closest friends were Victor and Catherine. 
Catherine grew up on a farm in Henderson, Kentucky. There
were no animals, just corn and soybeans. She was proud
that her father was one of the few Negroes in Kentucky who
owned a farm. But the farm was lots of hard work. Jumping
Joe Savoldi, who had somehow wound up in Henderson,
took Catherine under his wing and told her to go to Chicago.
She started her job as a housekeeper with us when we moved
into the apartment on Wellington Avenue. She was eighteen
or nineteen when she started so now was is about twenty-four. 

Catherine and I liked going to the movies. Sometimes she
would even come on Saturday afternoons and we would
go to the Lake Shore theater together. But when a movie
called The Egyptian came to the Roosevelt theater downtown,
I saw she was nervous about us going there. I knew why too.
She had a really serious expression on her face when she
saw the pictures from Little Rock, Arkansas, in the Tribune.
I had never really thought about prejudice against Negroes
until I saw those pictures. Anyway, we didn’t see The Egyptian. 

Incredibly enough, a movie called Land of the Pharaohs came
to the Lake Shore theater at almost the same time. We saw it
immediately. I had mainly been interested in ancient Rome
but Land of the Pharaohs got me interested in ancient Egypt
and it turned out there was a huge amount of stuff about
ancient Egypt in the main library on Michigan Avenue. 

After a movie Catherine and I always went next door to Ricky’s
deli. She was an excellent artist and she would do drawings
in her notebook about the movie we just saw. She wanted to
be a dress designer and a few nights every week she went to
a school to learn about the fashion business. 

Catherine watched movies carefully and had good ideas about
them. In Jet Pilot, for example, there was a scene where the
beautiful Russian pilot tries on a dress in front of a wrap-around
mirror in a dressing room. Catherine said that the mirror lets you
see how beautiful she is from three directions all at once. In
Prehistoric Women we both noticed that the bad cave girl was
more beautiful than the good cave girl. Catherine said the movie
was more interesting because the bad girl was more beautiful.

The evil princess in Land of the Pharaohs was supposed to be
beautiful but she wasn’t really that beautiful. However, the men
in the movie couldn’t resist her. Whether it was the Pharaoh or
the Pharaoh’s bodyguard, she got them to do whatever she
wanted. At the end of the movie she got trapped forever in a
pyramid with a large group of really horrible priests. 

After we saw Land of the Pharaohs it was late in the afternoon.
When we got back to the building we started to go through the
side entrance, which is what Catherine and I always did. Then
we would take the freight elevator to the eighth floor. 

But I had an idea. I said, “Let’s go in the front way.”

“Hm. I don’t think I’m supposed to do that.”

“It’s fine, come on.”

I knew that Joe would be the elevator man at this time of day.
All of them were old but each of the elevator men – Joe, Pete,
Egnar, and Steve – had individual characteristics. Joe had
trouble talking and my mother explained that he must have
had a stroke. I was sure that Joe wouldn’t mind Catherine
taking the front elevator. Neither would Egnar or Steve. Pete
might have been different but Joe was the elevator man now.

The building’s lobby was not brightly lit. When Albert Arenberg,
my father’s business partner, visited the building he wanted to
redesign the lobby but so far nothing had happened. The walls
had enlarged photographs of old-time Chicago. There were
couches in front of the photographs but I never saw anyone sit
there. The elevator was at the far end of the lobby and I could
see a group of people waiting for it to come down. 

There was Jerry Feldman, a famous gossip columnist who
lived on the floor above us, and his wife Lizzie. 

Groucho Marx was also there, with a beautiful young woman
who must have been Groucho’s girlfriend or his date for the
evening. Somehow I knew it wasn’t his wife, if he had one. 

Lots of celebrities visited Jerry Feldman. It wasn’t unusual to
see them in the elevator so I wasn’t surprised to see Groucho
Marx. Also, I had seen Groucho Marx so many times on You
Bet Your Life that I felt like I already knew him. It was slightly
surprising that he was wearing a beret but maybe he did that
for his girlfriend. With her short haircut, I thought she looked
French. I had never seen a French woman in person but I
saw the preview of And God Created Woman with Brigitte Bardot. 

Catherine didn’t seem surprised to see Groucho Marx either.
Maybe she was used to seeing him on television like me. Or
maybe she didn’t know who he was.

 The elevator arrived. Joe held the door open and we all went
in. It was a tight squeeze for six passengers, plus Joe. We
started going up but the elevator was always slow. Lizzie
Feldman was staring, or glaring, at Catherine, who looked
composed but she must have felt uncomfortable. Groucho
Marx looked uncomfortable too, maybe even a little frightened.
On You Bet Your Life he always seemed in charge. His date
stared forward without expression. Maybe this was a big new
world for her.

As we passed the fourth floor I decided to speak to Groucho
Marx. I said, “Hi, Groucho. My father and I love You Bet Your
Life. We watch it every week.” 

Groucho Marx didn’t react. He didn’t smile or make a joke.
He just looked at me out of the corner of his eye, or maybe
turned his head slightly. 

“It’s great when somebody says the secret word and the duck
comes down,” I added. 

 We reached the eighth floor and Joe opened the elevator’s door.
Lizzie Feldman seemed really angry. “Oh god, Mitch,” she hissed.
I was surprised she knew my name. I had been to their apartment
many times to visit Freddy Feldman, who was a year older than me,
but Jerry Feldman always called me “my boy.”

Later, after Catherine went home, I was in the library with my
parents. They wanted to ask me about school but I headed them
off by mentioning Groucho Marx. They took it in stride, just as I had. 

Then I said, “Jerry Feldman’s wife didn’t like Catherine riding in
the front elevator.”

“Why not?” my mother asked.

“Because she’s a Negro.”

They seemed shocked. My mother said, “Lou, is this a building of
all Jews and Catherine can’t ride in the front elevator? Is there a
rule of some kind?”

My father shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

“Well, you can ask about it at the next board of directors meeting.
You can find out.” 

“I will.”

It seemed hard to believe that they had never noticed that Catherine
always arrived on the freight elevator. But I had never thought about
it myself until the articles in the Tribune about Little Rock, Arkansas.
Now my mother was starting to get angry. She looked much angrier
than Lizzie Feldman in the elevator. My mother got that way a lot
because she was sick. She could be a really aggressive person. 

She said, “Tell those fuckers that everybody can ride in the front
elevator! If they don’t like it, tell them they can shut their goddamned
vorem diche moyl!”

Vorem diche moyl was an expression that meant “mouth full of
worms.” I knew that because I once asked her to translate it after
she said it to me. 

from "Duke Rhino," a work in progress [by Mitch Sisskind]

   

This was the first day of a new school year. I would be starting
seventh grade. My mother and I were in the breakfast nook.
The Chicago Tribune was on the table with two pictures on the
front page. One picture showed National Guard soldiers in Arkansas,
where the governor was trying to stop Negro kids from entering
the high school. I was familiar with that story. 
    There was also a picture of a blonde woman laughing, an actress
or some celebrity. I could read her name upside down.
    I asked, “Who’s Marilyn Monroe?” 
    “The most beautiful woman in the world.” 
    “Who’s the smartest man in the world?”
    “Albert Einstein.”
    “Who’s the strongest man in the world?”
    “Rocky Marciano.”
    “Which was the greater civilization, Egypt or Rome?”
    “What do you think?” 
    “Egypt.” 
    My father came into the breakfast nook and said good morning.
He gave my mother a kiss and went through the swinging door
into the dining room. I had already squeezed the orange juice so
my mother poured two glasses, one for my father and one for me,
and I brought them into the dining room. 
    On weekdays during the school year my father liked us to have
breakfast together, starting with orange juice. But my mother had
an attack during the night so she went to lie down, and it was just
my father and I at the table. When my mother had an attack, even
a bad one, we didn’t talk about it the next morning. We didn’t ever
talk about it. Soon we heard the door in the kitchen open as
Catherine arrived and started making French toast.

                                                ***

    I was five years old when we moved into the apartment. There
were three carpeted bedrooms with high ceilings, four bathrooms,
a foyer, a dining room, a living room, a room we called the library,
a kitchen, the breakfast nook which used to be called the butler’s
pantry, and a long hall where I played football and bombardment
with my cousin Victor. 
    There were three televisions in the apartment, one in the living
room, one in my father’s bedroom, and one in the library. They
were like living things, each with its own personality and its own
job to do. Because the color television was in the library, the
library was the most important room in the apartment. 
    When we moved into the apartment my mother had a plan to
combine what was called the maid’s room with another room in
order to create the library. When the work was done, the library
had dark green carpeting, wood-paneled walls, and a special
ceiling for indirect lighting designed by Albert Arenberg. Albert
Arenberg had photographs taken that were published in a
magazine for interior decorators.
    The two main pieces of furniture in the library were the driftwood
table and the color television. The driftwood table was a curved
piece of glass about five feet long on top of a large piece of gray
driftwood. There was always a small bowl of candy on the
driftwood table, usually chocolate covered cherries. 
    People commented on the driftwood table, how they had never
seen anything like it before. But the color television was by far the
most important piece of furniture in the library. It was massive, you
could sense the weight of it, and the screen diagonal was twenty-
seven inches. The color didn’t really work, people’s faces were
orange or green, but you could adjust the settings so it turned
into a regular black and white television. That’s usually what we
did. But it was still a color television. 
    My father’s favorite leather chair and its ottoman were across the
room facing the color television. To the left of the chair was a small
end table with an ashtray, and beyond the end table was the card
table with four leather chairs where pinochle was played on Saturday
afternoons, Monday nights, and sometimes on Sundays. There
were also two large sofas in the library and another leather chair
with another end table where my father kept his cigars in a special
wooden box called the humidor. There were no books in the library
except the TV Guide.

                                                       ***

    I went to a private elementary school called the Harris School. When
my father was in the Jewish Orphans Home he had school every day
of the year and he got an excellent education. He gave me a medal for
physics that he won in the year 1904. He wanted me to go to a good
school and a hard school, although my grades weren’t important to him
as long as I passed. He didn’t think the public schools were good enough
and he thought most of the private schools were too easy. 
    There were very few students at the Harris School. In my class there
were only nine kids, seven boys and two girls. Most of the kids at the
school were smart, but not all of them. Most of them were peculiar,
but not all of them. 
    Boys’ uniforms at Harris School consisted of a blue blazer with a
gold Harris School crest embroidered on the pocket, a white shirt,
a black knit tie, gray woolen pants that felt horrible if the weather
was warm, and black lace-up shoes. Girls wore red blazers with
the Harris School crest on the pocket and dark blue skirts. All the
girls wore white Keds gym shoes and white socks although that
was not part of the official uniform. In second grade at the Harris
School all the boys started carrying brief cases but none of the girls did. 
    My father taught me how to tie a Windsor knot. I was the only kid at
the Harris School who could do that, not that anyone noticed. As I tied
the Windsor knot while looking in my bathroom mirror, I wished that I
was more excited about starting seventh grade. It was frightening when
my mother had an attack like she had the night before. The blue room
was right next door and the walls were thick but I could hear her
screaming. It always happened at night and it was forgotten in the
morning. Maybe it wasn’t forgotten but we never talked about it. 

                                                  ***

    My cousin Victor went the public school called Lemoyne which
was like a different planet from the Harris School. There were no
uniforms at Lemoyne. Tough kids went there. If two kids got in an
argument during the week they would say, “I’ll see you on Saturday.”
That meant they would meet in the schoolyard where fights took place. 
    There were fights between two boys or two girls or even between
boys and girls. Sizes or ages didn’t matter, anybody could fight anybody
else. Sometimes the fights were really bad with blood and even teeth
getting knocked out. Victor and I watched a few times and then we
stopped going.
    One summer when I went to day camp my father paid for Victor to go
also. He won the boxing championship of the camp but it wasn’t like he
was actually fighting. Victor was never in a fight. I certainly never had a
fight with him, not even after he burned my arm with the cigarette lighter
in the back seat of the car. Once when I knew I was going to sneeze I
waited until the last second and then sneezed right in Victor’s face.
He didn’t get mad. In fact we both laughed about it. 

Two Poems (by Mitch Sisskind)

Explosion

An explosion is always right because 
Gramps can't argue with an explosion.
If he starts up at Thanksgiving dinner 
You and him might argue but he can't
Argue with an explosion you set off.

Same thing as when Gramps buys 
A cell phone and you have to set off 
An explosion or when Gramps goes
On a trip down memory lane again 
You have to set off an explosion. 

What if Gramps keeps continuously 
Bungling old time expressions like
It is two sides of the same horse?
You must set off another explosion,
You got to so stop your blubbering.

Sleepless

Gramps is scared that he might 
Forget his Social Security Number
So tossing and turning like a ship 
Heavy laden he keeps reciting 
His Social Security Number to
Himself until the casement glows
A glimmering square (Tennyson.)

 

from "Duke Rhino," a work in progress [by Mitch Sisskind]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Louie Balin
When my nephew Norb Berlowitz was drafted into the army,
Norb’s younger brother Seymour enrolled at the University of
Wisconsin. That was in 1943. 

If there was no father in the home, the government at that time
wasn’t drafting two brothers from the same family. There was
no father in Norb and Seymour’s home. My sister Lenore was
the boys’ mother. Lenore and I raised Norb and Seymour after
Lenore’s husband, Moe Berlowitz, abruptly disappeared. Moe
happened to be a professional magician so there was a bit of
humor in his disappearance.

We lived in an apartment on Douglas Boulevard with my other
sister, Bess Turk – her husband also disappeared – and Grandma
Minnie, the bubbe. Grandpa Victor had long since passed away

By the end of the war the bubbe too had passed away, Seymour
had joined a fraternity at the University of Wisconsin and Norb
was back from Europe after getting badly wounded fighting the
Nazis. I was doing well at the Harrison Wholesale Company with
my partner Albert Arenberg. The summer was hot so we sold lots
of fans.

Early in 1946 my secretary Evelyn Modeen caught the flu and she
decided to stop working. This was a shock. I took her out to lunch
and said, “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

She said, “Oh, you’ll manage just fine.”

I put an ad in the Tribune for a private secretary. I knew I would hire
the first person who came in. I just wanted to get it over with. The last
time I ran an ad in the Tribune Evelyn Modeen was the first person who
came in and she was at Harrison Wholesale for ten years.

A woman named Leah Esken came in. She didn’t call, she just came in
. Evelyn Modeen talked with her for a minute and then brought her over
to me. 

I don’t have a private office, just a desk among all the other desks. There’s
a little wooden fence with a gate around my desk so I stood up when she
came through the gate. 

She was an attractive woman. Without even thinking about it I remarked
that she looked like the actress Barbara Stanwyck. 

‘Oh, from Double Indemnity. Thank you, that’s so flattering.’ 

Then she added, “You look a little like Edward G. Robinson!”

“Not Fred MacMurray?” We both laughed. 

“Barbara Stanwyck was an orphan,” I said. “Maybe that’s why I’ve always
liked her. I was an orphan too.’

Why was I talking about Barbara Stanwyck and being an orphan? Leah
already seemed like an old friend or a member of the family.

She asked, “Were you in an orphanage?” 

“Yes, in Cleveland. The Jewish Orphan’s Home.”

“Did you ever think of running away?”

“Never. It was a wonderful place. We played baseball every day. In the
winter we played inside.”

I showed Leah around the Harrison Wholesale building. Almost anything
you could imagine was there. “Customers come in with catalogs and give
their orders to the order pickers,” I said. “The order pickers find the items
and bring them down to the customers. It looks messy but that’s the whole
idea. This isn’t Marshall Fields on State Street. It’s supposed to be a secret
place, like a speakeasy.”

“Your wife must like this place. She can get anything she wants, right?”

‘Oh, I’m not married.’

Leah looked hesitant. Maybe she thought my wife had died.

I said, “I’ve just never been married.” I wanted to sound reassuring. Back
at my desk I thanked Leah for coming in and gave the latest Harrison
Wholesale catalog

She said, “Thanks but we already have a catalog. My brother-in-law
Irving was here the other day and bought some tire chains. I live with
Irving and my sister Dorothy.'

That was all. I walked her to the door. 

“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Balin,” she said. 

“Well, you’ve got the job.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leah Esken
Dorothy and Irving got married in 1939. Nate, who is younger
than Dorothy and I, got married to Ina Kirsch in 1938. He was
just eighteen years old and Ina was seventeen. If they’d had
children before the war started, Nate would not have gotten
drafted. But it was only after Nate returned from Texas and
started Same Day Cleaners that Ann gave birth to Shula and
Myrna, the twin girls. 

During the war years Dorothy and I worked at the torpedo factory
in Forest Park. That’s where she met Irving, who was not drafted
because he worked at the torpedo factory. Thousands of people
worked there but not too many Jews. I had a few boyfriends but I
could never be serious about a non-Jew.

I shared an apartment in Douglas Park with Dorothy, Irving, and
Nate’s wife Ina. It was only a few blocks from where Louie lived
with his sisters but of course I didn’t know that at the time. Dorothy
got pregnant when the war still had a year to go but as soon as it
was over Dorothy, Irving, and I moved to an apartment at Cornelia
and Halsted on the North Side. Dorothy’s baby Victor was only about
six months old. Then Nate returned from Texas and also moved to the
North Side with Ina. He started Same Day Cleaners. 

Nate thought Irving was not good enough for Dorothy. He said Dorothy
had settled for Irving. He told me not to make the same mistake. He
said I was smarter and better looking than Dorothy and I shouldn’t
settle for some nudnik. 

Meanwhile Nate had twin girls, Dorothy had a husband and a baby who was
almost a year old, and I had nothing even though I was the oldest. I was
waitressing at the Walnut Room in Marshall Fields and helping Dorothy with Victor. 

When I saw the want-ad for Harrison Wholesale I thought I would give it a try.
Why not? I knew nothing about being a secretary but I was a good student at
Austin High School. I could certainly read and write.

When I met Louie at the interview I was surprised that he wasn’t wearing a
wedding ring. But Jewish men don’t always wear one. 

I was more surprised when he said he had never been married. 

I was also surprised that he didn’t have a private office. He didn’t need an office
but he needed a private secretary.

I wasn’t surprised when he told me I had the job. I was glad to hear it though. 

I saw a new world opening for me in the interview at Harrison Wholesale.
I didn’t see every little detail yet, but so what? It was more like a dream that
you remember the next morning and you know it will come true. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rabbi Frankenstein 
I first met Louie Balin when I was invited to Chicago to audition
for the office of associate rabbi at the old Washington Boulevard
Temple. I conducted High Holy Day services and I met some
prominent members of the congregation, including Louie. Well,
I passed the test. My family and I were soon on our way to the
Windy City.

Although I’d had my own pulpit in New Orleans, I was intrigued
by the possibilities in the North. Chicago’s Jewish community –
second largest in the United States – was in transition both
physically and financially. In the first years of the twentieth century,
large numbers of Jews who had been born in the Maxwell Street
ghetto migrated northwest to the West Side area around Douglas
Boulevard and Roosevelt Road. For several decades all was well
and good. During the 1940s and 1950’s, however, owing to racial
and economic changes on the West Side, a new, two-pronged
migration began. Middle class Jews, financially stable but not
necessarily wealthy, recreated the West Side in Rogers Park, or
they became pioneers in suburban Skokie and Lincolnwood.
Those who could afford it, meanwhile, moved close to the lakefront,
forming a high net-worth Jewish population along North Lake Shore
Drive and Sheridan Road.

While all this was taking place, the Washington Boulevard Temple
had found a new location and a revised identity as the Oak Park Temple,
moving decisively in the discretion of Reform Judaism. I wholeheartedly
endorsed this trend. 

Suddenly the position of senior rabbi at Temple Sholom became available.
This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Temple Sholom, on North Lake
Shore Drive, was and remains one of the premier Reform Jewish
congregations in America, comparable to Temple Emanu-el in New York
City. Furthermore, as well-to-do Jews from the West Side were relocating
to the lakefront, there was a chance to greatly enlarge Temple Sholom’s
membership and financial base. In the eyes of Temple Sholom’s Board
of Directors, this should be a top priority for a new Senior Rabbi. I promised 
the Board that I shared this goal and I also described exactly how I would
achieve it. 

Once again, thank God I passed the test. Departing the Oak Park Temple
was painful, but like Abraham in the Book of Genesis I felt called to leave
where I was and go to the place that was shown to me. 

I immediately made changes at Temple Sholom to attract the affluent new
arrivals from the West Side. I replaced the traditional siddur with the Reform
Jewish Union Prayer Book. I replaced Friday night services with Sunday
morning worship, although I did retain Shabbat observance for those few
who wished to take part. I entirely dispensed with aliyot. I incorporated
orchestral and vocal accompaniment into the Sunday services and very
fully into the High Holidays. Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah remained
available, but group confirmation for fifteen year olds became the preferred
choice. 

Louie Balin had been an early arrival on the lakefront, having left the West
Side right after his marriage to Leah in late 1946. I’d had the merit of performing
their ceremony at the Oak Park Temple, and when Louie mentioned his plans
to relocate I assumed we were parting ways for good. But when I scanned the
membership rolls at Temple Sholom, I was happy to see Louie’s name. I called
immediately and invited him to come in for a chat.

To make a long story short, Louie wound up commissioning a new Torah scroll
for the Temple as well as a beautiful stained glass window with a scene from the
Book of Ruth. Louie also assured me that his son Irwin, less than a year old at
the time, would in due course enroll in our Sunday school with an intention of
continuing all the way through confirmation. Last but not least, Louie paid
membership dues for his sisters Bess Turk and Lenore Berlowitz, who were now
also living in our neighborhood, as well for Louie’s nephews Norb and Seymour Berlowitz.

From a work in progress [by Mitch Sisskind]

The dry cleaning business was extremely important on my mother's
side of the family. My Uncle Nate hadn't been a combat soldier like
Norb Berlowitz, but Nate had still been in the army during the war. 
He was assigned to a snack bar at a large training base in Texas. 
When he left the army Uncle Nate opened a store called Same Day 
Cleaners which specialized in dry cleaning police uniforms and any
other clothing owned by policemen or their families. If you were a 
policeman or related to one, or even just a friend of a policeman, 
you could get your clothes dry cleaned at a discount by Same Day
Cleaners. Uncle Nate wasn't stingy about who got the discounts.
The discounts were a way of getting people into the Same Day
Cleaners stores. 

The Harrison Wholesale Company used a discount method similar 
to Same Day Cleaners but on a larger scale. If you wanted to buy 
something at Harrison Wholesale, you could see the official price on
a page in the Harrison Wholesale catalog. If you looked to the left of
the official price you would see some numbers that were a code for
the discounted price. All you needed to obtain the discount was a 
Harrison Wholesale card, which was easy to get. It was just a matter
of asking for one.

Harrison Wholesale was much bigger than Same Day Cleaners.
There were several Harrison Wholesale stores around Chicago
and also stores in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Cleveland. Same
Day Cleaners had only two stores, both on the North Side of Chicago,
which annoyed Uncle Nate. It also annoyed him that my father was
bombed by a blimp in World War One and Norb Berlowitz had been
wounded in World War Two. My mother said that was why Uncle Nate
started wearing a gun in his belt at Same Day Cleaners and why he
wanted to be palzy-walzy with policemen. He was also rather short.  

Uncle Irving, Aunt Dorothy's husband, had never been in the army
but he didn't care. He was a good athlete who could stand on his
head and then switch into a handstand. Uncle Irving had a dry cleaning 
store on Halsted Street but Uncle Nate viewed it as a small time operation
that was barely scraping by. He wanted Uncle Irving to start working at
Same Day Cleaners, and maybe eventually he would become a store
manager. 

Meanwhile my mother would badger my father about giving Uncle
Irving a manager's job at Harrison Wholesale. Finally my father agreed,
except Uncle Irving and his family would have to move to Cleveland.
However, Uncle Irving was too proud to close his dry cleaning store in
spite of the offers from Uncle Nate and my father. It was a source of
tension on my mother's side of the family.

When my mother and Aunt Dorothy went to look for porcelain figurines,
sometimes Victor and I stayed at Victor's house but usually we went
along. My mother drove our 1952 Cadillac with Aunt Dorothy beside her
and with us in the back seat. How long and boring those rides were, all
the way into Wisconsin or Indiana searching for antique stores. Victor
and I played a game where the first person who saw a car with an out of 
state license plate was allowed to hit the other person. There were hardly
any of those licenses in Wisconsin or Indiana. 

My mother and Aunt Dorothy never stopped talking during the long drives 
and sometimes they got into arguments. Once my mother said that Aunt
Dorothy should tell Uncle Irving that he should accept my father's offer of
a job at Harrison Wholesale in Cleveland. 

Aunt Dorothy said, "Leah, Irv has his heart set on keeping the plant open,"

"The plant? That's a good one!" my mother laughed. "Meanwhile you're
ironing grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner." It was a joke in the family
that Aunt Dorothy made grilled cheese sandwiches using a hand iron.

"Well, not everyone marries her rich boss like you did," Aunt Dorothy said,
but not angrily. It was more like she would start to cry.

"You're right about that, Dorothy, and before I married a rich man I was 
working full-time and also changing Victor's diapers in the middle of 
the night. Don't forget that. And since I married a rich man you're getting
a check from him every month. And you're not the only one. Lenore 
Berlowitz, Bess Turk, Seymour Berlowitz, they're all schnorers. Norb 
Berlowitz is the only one who ever shows any appreciation. Lou even 
endowed a research laboratory at Michael Reese Hospital. We went 
down to see it and they were doing research on tapeworms. I got 
nauseated. Lou pays college tuition for kids in the middle of nowhere.
I don't even know how that happens. We get letters from kids in 
Kentucky saying thanks for paying for me to go to college. At least 
they write a letter. Seymour Berlowitz never wrote a letter about 
the University of Wisconsin. These people treat Lou like a smorgasbord."

Aunt Dorothy was quietly sobbing into a kleenex. It was true that
she had crossed a boundary by accusing my mother of marrying 
for money. But it was time for my mother to quiet down. What if 
Aunt Dorothy got angry instead of just crying? Of course she knew
about my adoption. Did she know about my mother's illness?

But my mother wasn't finished. "I have to tell you something, Dorothy,
and I'm only saying it because things have to change. There are times
when people drop off a load of dry cleaning at Irving's store and 
because Irving doesn't even have enough money to buy solvents
Irving has to take the load to another dry cleaner. He actually has 
to do that, so then when Irving finally gets paid then the money goes straight
back to the other dry cleaner. And do you know who the other dry cleaner
is, Dorothy? It's Same Day Cleaners. Nate told me this himself. Irving is
paying Nate to do his dry cleaning. We all know he's a shtunk but 
Nate was completely flabbergasted."

There were times my mother stayed in bed for days, lying on her back with 
her arm over her eyes. That always frightened me, and it was happening
more often. But other times she would really step on the gas. We were 
going at least seventy on a two-lane highway. 

"Mom...." I said. But she didn't hear me.

"I understand that Irving doesn't want to work for Nate. I wouldn't want
to work for Nate either. Okay, so work for Harrison Wholesale. You have
to go to Cleveland but that won't be forever. Lou can't bring Irving 
in as a manager starting tomorrow. Norb Berlowitz worked for two 
years as an order picker."

"Mom...."

Suddenly Aunt Dorothy erupted. "You knew just what you were
doing when you went to work at Harrison Wholesale, Leah! You even
told me what your goddamned plan was!"

I looked at Victor helplessly. He had an idea. The Cadillac provided a
cigarette lighter in the back seat. Victor grabbed my arm and burned
it with the cigarette lighter. Of course I shrieked but at least it got
their attention. My mother swerved the car to the side of the road. 
Now they were both screaming at Victor. He just sat there. He had
sacrificed himself. I rubbed my scalded arm. They were making
a federal case out of it, as my father would say.

Limbo [by Mitch Sisskind]

 

 

Limbo is a place or an idea that crops

Up fairly often like if you're in Starbucks

Someone will say I'm in limbo about it

Or I was in limbo about it until recently.

But what do we really mean by limbo

Or by in limbo since limbo itself is

Pretty much always preceded by in?

You almost never hear limbo alone.

At one time I thought limbo meant

The same thing as between a rock

And a hard place so you could say

That if you didn't want to say limbo.

But between a rock and a hard place

Implies a certain amount of tension

Like when you pull on both ends of

A rubber band which is unlike limbo.

The whole idea of limbo is how there's

No tension or no energy of any sort

And limbo is just kind of lying there

Like when there's flotsam and jetsam.

Instead of limbo you might also say

Six of one half a dozen of another or

Hobson's Choice whatever that is but

None of them are exactly like limbo.

Now do you see what I'm getting at?

Do you see how by writing these lines

About limbo that are in limbo themselves

I've shown you what limbo is instead of

Only just telling you about limbo?

Because it's hard to define limbo

Like it's hard to define the color blue

So you tell them to look at the sky.

'Beautiful women like to look in the mirror...' [by Mitch Sisskind]

Beautiful women like to look in the mirror
For long periods of time sometimes hours
So if you ever manage to land one of them
Be ready to sit solitary at the television set
All afternoon long and on into the night.

Here's another thing to know about them.
They will try on every article of clothing
In the closet before venturing out into
The world so when you finally return
There's a big pile of clothes on the bed.

What if you hear a wolf whistle while
You and her are out walking? Okay
Write something on a piece of paper
And while the degenerate looks at it
You suddenly kick him in the balls.

One upside of the whole thing is how
If she's beautiful enough you can get
Comped in expensive restaurants like
Happened to me and her do you want
To know where? Okay. Wolfgang Puck.

Two Poems [by Mitch Sisskind]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Nellie and the Big Spiders

After 4 July how quickly summer goes until

Toward the end the big spiders come whom

I love but more than love respect them for

The web astonishments they each night build.

Sure, I'd like to get a new wristwatch but

How would my well-loved Timex feel as

The hour of the big spiders draws nigh

Which needs accurately to be clocked?

Wait, I've got it. I'll put a new watch in my

Amazon checkout cart but not finalize

The sucker till football season starts and

Then retire Old Nellie to my sock drawer!

Rabbi Frankenstein

That anyone could be named Rabbi Frankenstein

Seemed impossible but Rabbi Frankenstein was

His name! That he had a glass eye also seemed

Impossible but there it was! In the old days around

1957 Rabbi Frankenstein used to suddenly appear

And I always wondered why but looking back on it

Now I understand that he wanted a donation from

My father Lou and he never failed to get one either!

To start the ball rolling Rabbi Frankenstein would

Always give me a gift like a ceramic elephant or

A small jet plane as Lou smilingly looked on and

Then they went into the library to talk for about

30 minutes although Lou just wanted to write the

Check already but he never spoke disrespectfully

Of Rabbi Frankenstein he would just say oy vey

When Rabbi Frankenstein was finally gone!

Splash, splash [by Mitch Sisskind]

When I told Joe about how Sam Giancana

Punched Sammy Davis Jr. in the stomach

At Frank Sinatra's house Joe looked at me

And said, "I am like a frog that's been sitting

"Quietly on a lily pad until splash, splash,

"It jumps back into the water not because

"It wants to but because it must or else

"Everything will go right straight to hell.

"Sam Giancana hasn't been the same

"Since 1954 when Angeline passed on.

"She was an angel. Hey, I'd like to punch

"All of them in the stomach, Giancana,

"Sinatra, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford,

"Not Dean Martin though. He's fabulous."

Ant and Clown (by Mitch Sisskind)

The Ant

You could not call him the Ant to his face
And you would be dead if you made the
Mistake of calling him the Ant to his face.
Or what if you called him the Ant except
Not to his face, like you called him the Ant
To somebody and he only heard about it?
He wouldn't care. It meant nothing to him.

The Clown

It was the same way with Joey the Clown.
They called him the Clown because he 
Liked to clown around but you yourself
Could definitely not ever clown around. 
Or just like how he felt about the suburbs.
A lot of them moved to the suburbs but
His basic attitude was fuck the suburbs. 

Louis Sisskind, around 1958 (by Mitch Sisskind)

Are a few observations.

Although he was right handed, he wore his watch on his right hand, which is slightly unusual. Also, he did not take his watch off when he went to bed at night.

Although he was almost completely bald, he got a shave and some sort of scalp treatment every Friday at the barber shop in the railroad station. He did have some hair around the edge of his head, which also got cut.

His tie, with a Windsor knot. I went to a grade school where we wore ties every day so he showed me how to do that knot. Once it was tied, you still had to pinch it. One of the few things I can remember him criticizing me for was if the knot didn't look right.

Although he did not finish high school and I never saw him read a book, he had an excellent vocabulary. Once when I was about ten years old I said I would say a word and he should try to define it. He agreed. The word was impetus.

Before he went to work one day he gave me some money and asked me to buy a small pack of Perfecto Garcia cigars. I was also about ten years old at that time. That night he asked about the cigars. I said I had forgotten. He quietly but very seriously said that if I asked him to do something, getting it done became the most important thing in his life. That made a huge impression on me. Somehow it was really scary. The next day I got the cigars.

He was at the Jewish Orphans Home in Cleveland until he was 14 years old. When I asked if he ever tried to run away, he seemed surprised. "Never! We played indoor baseball every day."

This picture was take at his office with a tiny "spy camera" called a Minox or something like that, which was briefly a fad in the 1950s.

O'Hara or Ashbery? Place your bets [by Mitch Sisskind]

A Daughter, Her Father and the Long-Gone Poet Who Brought Them Together

In her memoir “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me,” Ada Calhoun set out to write a poet’s biography and found a connection to her father instead.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/books/ada-calhoun-book-frank-ohara.html?searchResultPosition=1

I'm really looking forward to this book! The NYT article references Schjeldahl's remarking that Ashbery was a "better poet" than O'Hara. Without debating the whole questionable enterprise of rating poets in the first place, I do believe that Ashbery was "better" in at least two respects. First, if we compare the "best" poetry of both men, Ashbery at his "best" was "better." Also, Rivers and Mountains is one of the "best" books of poetry in the 20th century, in a league with Four Quartets. O'Hara himself wrote in a review (in Poetry magazine)  that Ashbery's Some Trees was "the most beautiful first book of poems since Wallace Stevens' Harmonium." Actually, Rivers and Mountains (Ashbery's thrid book) makes Wallace Stevens's Harmonium look like a Sunday school picnic.

On the other hand, I also believe that Ashbery did not again produce a book at the level of Rivers and Mountains, nor a poem at the level of "The Skaters." But who could? And he certainly kept at it. Who knows what O'Hara might have done if he'd been able to keep at it? (Her died at the age of 40). When Bertrand Russell was told he was too young to write an autobiography, he agreed that he might someday have become president of Mexico.

 

And one more thing, as Columbo used to say.  O'Hara's Lunch Poems, is a masterpiece in its own right, "better" than anything Ashbery did in its own way, and not the less for that. Everything about it is great, the text, the size of the book, the colors, the publication date. Sam Johnson, always interested in physicians, taught that a correct prescription encompassed many factors: the drug, the patient, the season of the year, the time of day, who knows what else. I had the great fortune to buy my copy of Lunch Poems at City Lights bookstore one day in 1965. The exact right thing, at the exact right place, at the exact right time. Thanks, boss. Much ass grassy ass.

Owning a Karelian Bear Dog [by Mitch Sisskind]

You've bought a Karelian Bear Dog,

Now what? Does it have a name?

Does it have a place to sleep? Food?

Water? If you have a summer home

Far from the city's hurly-burly then

I am quite sanguine about prospects

For excursions thither but mind you

There will be fleas! So do you still
Want the Karelian Bear Dog now?

Kierkegaard said of marriage that

You'll regret it if you do but also

If you don't and the same goes

For owning a Karelian Bear Dog,

It's basically a roll of the dice.

West Covina or Rancho Cucamonga [by Mitch Sisskind]

West Covina or Rancho Cucamonga

 

Got a phone number where you talk

To dead people of course they're not

Really dead it's just some guy out in

West Covina or Rancho Cucamonga

But what the hell, right? What the hell!

 

You call the number and you say which

Dead person you want to talk to so I said

Who's the most popular dead person and

The guy said Hitler so I said sounds good

Tell Hitler to call me so I can talk to Hitler.

 

Pretty soon the phone rang and a guy said

This is Hitler so I said hey what's up Hitler

How are things in West Covina or over in

Rancho Cucamonga because it's a scam

Man this is a scam and we both know it!

-- Mitch Sisskind

Big Tech [by Mitch Sisskind]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Internet
In those days I was doing trade shows
Mostly in Vegas, Dallas, or Phoenix
And since it was before the internet
I used to leave voice mail messages
For my wife where I would call myself
On The Road Mouse and if she left one
For me she was Stay At Home Mouse
Or vice versa where she would be
On The Road Mouse and I would be
Stay At Home Mouse depending
On who was on the road or at home
Which in those days was Boulder
And then we moved to Indianapolis
Where we got the Internet in 1993.

Text
When cell phones came in we lived
In Phoenix texting back and forth
Many dozens of times every day.
Phoenix Table Mat was a bad place
To work and when I proffered
In my texts that I wanted to look
Elsewhere but was leery to quit she
Wrote back in answer a text signed
Optimistic Mouse which was sweet
So I wrote one signed Love You Mouse.
The problem was how in those days
Texting was not automatically free
So I got a $2000 one-month bill but
Kept my mouth shut and paid it.

Zoom
Phrases like old home week or
A trip down memory lane refer to
When you wallow in the past by
Talking about the Model T Ford
When we now have the Tesla or
About texting when we now have
Snapchat, Instagram, and Zoom.
I will download my personality
Onto a computer so she can
Zoom with me after I’m dead
Or if she’s dead first she will
Have downloaded herself also
But what if we’re both dead?
Well, it will be up to the kids.