Nicole Steinberg
Nicole Steinberg may or may not be Jewish. This is the premise of her first poem "Proof," and as a discussion on the mutability of identity, it's genius. The two poems that follow, "A-cup" and "B-cup," read each as its own poem and also as a commentary on its sister. The Nepotist is impressed with that. "Say you hate all / whistling but the sound / of boiling. I lock / you out and hunt / for archival puddles; fashion / bras into butterfly nets, / pull your necktie cross / my brow to inform / you: I mean business." The provocation and come-on-esque spirit of these two poems in undeniable, and together they send The Nepotist into a slight but frank swoon. "Start / high in the attic, / where the heat goes," she writes. Pretty heady, sexy stuff. The Nepotist might need to lie down now.
Thanks, Nicole.
***
Proof
I keep telling my mother
I’m Jewish, but she doesn’t
want to believe me. Honest,
I say. Swear to God.
I bring out menorahs, stale
boxes of matzah, video footage
of my bat mitzvah. Four
men lift my chair, high
enough to see my panties.
Now do you believe me?
I ask. No! she yells,
There’s no real proof! Upstairs
neighbors bang on the floor
with blunt ends of broomsticks.
No one sweeps our house.
No one ever throws anything
away. I collect delicate necklaces,
fourteen-carat Stars of David,
mute and discolored ribboned boxes,
brittle old candy. I’m not
making this up. I’m pretty
sure I’m supposed to be
Jewish. The neighbors threaten to
call the police. I hang
my torso out the window
and haggle until I’m blue.
***
A-Cup
Take off your trousers
inside the bed’s room
where tetra fish live
alone and red, finned
like us. Our lonely
bovine hearts lay halved,
cut diamonds. The mosquito
always finds me in
the night, leaving bites
in pairs, discarded pits
of former fruit. Hold
me like this—twin
palms against flesh not
quite raised; fingers flexed
upon the trembling lid
of this unruly pot.
***
B-Cup
Say you’re the kind
of person I imagined:
prefer what you can
hold in your hand.
Say you hate all
whistling but the sound
of boiling. I lock
you out and hunt
for archival puddles; fashion
bras into butterfly nets,
pull your necktie cross
my brow to inform
you: I mean business.
This was a slow
melting, dear; let me
borrow your galoshes. Start
high in the attic,
where the heat goes.
***
About the Poet:
Nicole Steinberg is an editor-at-large of LIT and the founder and curator of Earshot, a NYC reading series dedicated to emerging writers. Her writing appears in publications such as BOMB, No Tell Motel, Eleven Eleven, Barrow Street and Barrelhouse. She is the author of a forthcoming chapbook, Birds of Tokyo (Dancing Girl Press), and the editor of a literary anthology, Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens, to be published by SUNY Press in 2011. She hails from Queens, NY and currently lives in Philadelphia.
On the identity of The Nepotist:
I have no earthly clue who The Nepotist could be. As a result, I’ll assume that it's me and my alter ego is running it while I sleep, Tyler Durden–style.
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