Ruth Lehrer

SHANGHAI TRANSLATION

Nanjing Road flashing
an Adidas billboard warning
Impossible is Nothing!

Across the swarming Shanghai street
I catch the eye of a deaf girl
Deaf? I sign, Deaf?

She startles, in her bubble
of international thought
I read
White, old lady, signing to me?

She nudges her friend
eyes wide, Look Look!
she flashes back
as the bicycle pushcart fake-Gucchi hordes
push us
farther apart

And she gives me
the silent solidarity nod.

* * *

SUCKING LEMON PICKLE

When I moved to the all-white school,
the not-white girl
taught me to suck Indian lemon pickle
   straight from the jar.
Dragging pulpy fire-peel
across our adolescent tongues
we sat on her high kitchen stools
swinging our naked toes
licking the salty red chili pepper kick.

When I moved to the dirt poor mountains,
the Deaf woman
with the spiteful child and the running roaches on the floor
picked me a wild strawberry
from her lawn.
And even though her garage was full of rotting trash
   and a dead cat,
I ate it
and she gave me another.

Ruth Lehrer is a writer and sign language interpreter living in Western Massachusetts. Her poems and fiction have been published in Meat for Tea and she received third prize in the 2009 Hampshire Life Short Story Contest. She is currently working on her first novel, a story of food porn and life in a small town.