You cannot have true faith without true doubt—              
this I know from my gram and her Kraków ghetto of doubt.

What Gram remembers: places she could not live, places she could not enter—
Juden raus—six-point yellow star, disease and doubt.

The young Jews call back for their mothers—their cries, poems of doubt.
Earlier accounts: seders, synagogues, Sabbaths—music despite doubt.

The Dead Sea was dying, my gram was dying, but her eyes, turquoise—
her ticket out? Or survivor’s guilt?—saltwater blocks of doubt.

At Masada, Jews trained doves to send messages, their messages of doubt:
food, parchment, weapons. Then death, their final message—no doves, no doubts.

In my long days of Hebrew school, rituals of doubt—I attempt to fathom
the diasporas, such wanderers’ knapsacks and ramshacks—the unbelonging of doubt.

My gram’s poems—inside-cries of doubt. But others’ poems for show,
“leavening biscuits, ladling jam.” Teutonic delight—the propaganda doubt.

Kaddish, this mourner’s prayer for those dead—old Jews in their old socks          
full of holes and rivers of drought. Ghettos of dread, ghettos of doubt.