Judith Sanders: Bubbe and Zayde Take Me to the Ice Capades

Bubbe and Zayde Take Me to the Ice Capades

On their Bronx subway platform,
they hold my hands.
She with her hatpin and cloth coat.
He in button-down and tie clip,
worn for this holiday
from cashiering at a newsstand.

We wait for the train to Manhattan,
where they never go, except today,
for me, their scrubbed, chubby grandchild,
who can’t speak their language
and has her own room.

She was never yanked from school.
Would never know, God willing,
the soldiers, the nightmare of ripping
and smashing, the mother’s screams.

My parents don’t care about the Ice Capades,
the ladies in sequins, twirled by men in tights.
They are going to the symphony.

Bubbe and Zayde guard me, one on each side,
from the clatter of the oncoming train.
They do not ask why I wish to see
the Ice Capades, when my whole life
is a glide on ice, an escapade, a frolic.

~~~

Ferris Wheel

I danced past the hospital playroom
where bald children rode tricycles,
because you, my son, would get well.

You lay comatose on morphine.
At last a specialist
jumpstarted you.

Near home, from your car seat,
you spotted the annual carnival,
the whirling rides, the colored lights.

So I carried you, still limp,
in dinosaur pajamas, feverish head
tucked into the curve of my neck.

We threaded through
sturdy, scampering children
to the Ferris wheel.

Next year, I whispered
into the perfect shell of your ear,
we’ll ride to the top,

and everything down here
will look small and far away.

~~~~~~

Copyright 2025 Judith Sanders. From The Universe with Borscht by Judith Sanders (Kelsay Books, 2025). Bubbe and Zayde […] was first published in The Jewish Writing Project. Ferris Wheel was first published in Blue Heron Review.

Judith Sanders’s first poetry collection was In Deep. Her work appears in Pleiades, The American Scholar, Jewish Fiction, Modern Language Studies, Humor Darling, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her poems have won the Hart Crane and Wergle Flomp Humor prizes.