Shhh by Raymond Federman

box I found in the bedroom closet, and that there were photos in it. A photo of my sisters and me when we were little. The only photo I have of them. And a photo of my parents. Their wedding photo, I think. A few photos of my father. He liked to be photographed. One of these is of him as a young man. It shows how handsome he was.
    That photo is half torn, but that’s the one I like best because it has a kind of symbolic meaning for me. How my father was torn from life. There is also a photo of my maternal grandmother seated with my cousin Salomon as a baby on her lap, and standing on one side of her, my aunt Marie in a beautiful flowered dress, and on the other side my mother wearing an ugly black dress that went all the way down to her ankles. It must have been the dress she had to wear in the orphanage. I suppose that once in a while my mother was allowed to leave the orphanage to visit her family.
    Did I forget to mention that my mother was raised in an orphanage?
    For details about the reason why my Mother spent some ten years in an orphanage after her father died in 1910, in a flood, see pages 140- 141 of Aunt Rachel’s Fur.
    Besides these photos, which I took with me to America, I found two photos of two different women I could not recognize. Both were very beautiful and elegantly dressed. They were not my aunts. As far as I can remember, I had never seen these women.
    One is leaning against a curtain in a provocative pose. The other is seated at a table her legs crossed.
    The photos are postcards, the kind that were fashionable at that time. I don’t know why, but I kept these two photos.
    On the back of the photo of the woman standing by the curtain is written: En me regardant pensez que je pense tout le temps à vous. And it is signed, Léa.
    I’ll translate. While looking at me, think that I think of you all the time.
    On the back of the other photo of the beautiful lady sitting at the table is written: Caresses, Pauline.
    I don’t think I need to translate.
    While I don’t want to draw any conclusions on the basis of these two photos, they do seem to confirm what my aunts were saying about my father, that he was a womanizer.
    My aunts also said that my father was a gambler. That instead of working, he spent his time at the race track, or in cafes playing cards for money.
    It’s true that my father was not home very often, and when he was there it was to argue with my mother, usually about money, or with the rest of the family, because besides everything else, as I have already told, my father was a fanatic of politics, and he always argued with everybody about politics. Especially with Leon.
    My father was on the left, whereas Leon was on the right. Which is normal since Leon was rich. Rich people are always on the right. My father was a Trotskyist, or perhaps I should say, an anarchist, and he was always broke. That’s why my poor mother had to clean houses for other people so that she could feed her children.
    In our house, bread was sacred. If by accident my sisters or I dropped a piece of bread on the floor, we had to pick it up immediately and kiss it. It’s Maman who taught us that. Also, if we put a loaf of bread on the table upside down, we had to turn it over immediately, because Maman told to us that’s it brings bad luck.
    When my sisters and I were still very young there was a big economic crisis in France, and because we were poor our mother would take us to the soup kitchen. She was so ashamed to have to take us there. My sisters and I didn’t mind. We even had fun standing in line with the other poor people of the neighborhood.
    I wrote this poem describing how we stood in line at la soupe populaire, and how ...

OK, go ahead Federman, stick another one of your old poems here. If your publisher doesn’t like it, he can always take it out before publishing the book.
    Personally, I believe that my poems, especially those about my mother and father add