A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
Helen, Bayla, Mara
1
In Sparta, naked boys and girls
at twelve played games together
to train for war. Elders shaved
the scalps of girls and painted
their heads blue to discourage
sex, leaving only wisps of hair
shooting up like standing
ponytails. It’s said that Theseus,
the king of Athens,
did not recoil at the vision
of the hairless, unclothed Helen.
In myth, he raped the future queen.
2
Her naked head reminds of me
of some pious women
of my culture asked
to shave their heads at marriage
to repel rapists, outsiders,
who invaded shtetls.
Does that ever work?
Rich women could wear wigs
while poor women made do
with their babushkas—
their husbands made love
to bald wives.
3
Did my great-grandmother, Bayla,
shave her head? There is no one
left to ask. A widow who
raised many children selling rags,
no one left to ask how many,
no one knows how she lived to be
one hundred seven. One son
who sired my father
was a brilliant bum who knew
seven languages but never earned
a living. His wife, my Grandma Mara,
had soft fine light brown hair.
Laurel Brett
Laurel Brett holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature with an advanced certificate in creative writing. Her thesis on the fiction of Thomas Pynchon won a national award (University Microfiche), as did her essay on her bas mitzvah, "Where Were You?" (Nassau Review). Her critical study on postmodern fiction, Disquiet on the Western Front, appeared in 2016 from Cambridge Scholars, and her novel, The Schrödinger Girl (Akashic Books, 2020), was called a page turner by Weike Wang in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Her first collection of poems, Penelope in the Car, is soon to appear from Indolent Books. She is inspired by nature, art, music, myth, the work of other writers, and empathy. Laurel lives with her poodles, Kafka and Derrida, overlooking a harbor.
