Winter 2026: “What He Ate to Stay Alive” appears in Esther Poetry Journal.

 

Rooted in my Ashkenazi heritage, the poem follows a lineage shaped by flight, waiting, and the discipline of staying unnoticed. It considers survival not as triumph but as measure, what can be taken, what must be refused, and how a body learns to remain long enough to cross into another life.

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Read it here.