Joe Dolce: Can you write left-handed poetry?

Can you write left-handed poetry?

The clerk at the Schreibstube produced

samples on a paper pad:

gutter rhymes, obscenities, filthy limericks.

Eighteen year old Abraham Cykiert

had written verse since fourteen,

but, in Auschwitz, a good poem earned

extra soup, bread. Even shoes.

Cykiert wrote the doggerel well,

becoming a member of a group,

that amused capos and SS at camp functions.

The Nazis loved his filth, and laughed.

At the end of the night, the entertainers

were rewarded with party leftovers,

but after the war, Abraham Cykiert

was so ashamed of the left-handed poetry

he had written to survive,

it took him twenty years

before he could write

anything

else.

Joe Dolce