This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox.
Matzo, or unleavened bread, symbolizes both redemption and freedom, playing an integral role in the Jewish festival of Passover. According to Deuteronomy 16:3, “[F]or seven days you are to eat with it matzah, the bread of affliction; for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste.” In today’s poem, Philip Terman reflects on Passover as well as “The Last Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side.”
Terman’s recent books include "My Blossoming Everything" (Saddle Road Press), "The Whole Mishpocha" (Ben Yehuda Press), and, as co-translator, "Tango Below a Narrow Ceiling: The Selected Poems of Riad Saleh Hussein" (Bitter Oleander, 2021). A selection of his poems, My Dear Friend Kafka (Nimwa Press, Damascus), was translated into Arabic by Saleh Razzouk. Terman co-directed the 2023 James Wright Poetry Festival, directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center, and is co-curator of the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Buffalo. He’s collaborated with composers and visual artists, and has performed his poetry with the jazz band Catro.
Terman explains today’s poem: “In the summer of 1995… my wife…and I—teachers that we were—decided to spend…summer in New York,…[where we explored] the old Jewish section of the Lower East Side, [and] . . . had read so much about in the tales of Isaac Singer and the Yiddish poets. On Rivington Street, we came across the famous Streits Matzo Factory…. ‘called by several scholars, “the Jewish Plymouth Rock.’” It originally opened in 1916.… [and] naturally reminded me of all the matzo—the bread of our affliction—I’ve eaten at all those Passover Seders. I was struck that many of the workers—like many of the residences of the neighborhood—were Hispanic, and thus this poem.”
Here’s “The Last Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side” by Philip Terman
The Last Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side
In the back room, two Hispanic kids bop
and listen to rap from the transistor radio
as they scoop the crackers that spit out
from the original oven, a minimum wage
job in a hard time, their motions in rhythm
to the machine’s need, their unkosher hands
wearing plastic gloves, their backs hunched
from all-day bending. They crack them in half
and stack them in wire cages electrically
conveyed above their heads through sealed air
into another room to be boxed, priced, shipped,
sold and eaten because we were brought forth
out of Egypt, thrust out and couldn’t tarry,
for seven days eaten and for seven nights
lest we be cut off forever. My father,
at the head of the table, breaks the middle
wafer, reciting and this is what we ate
in the desert, as we dip our portions into
the horseradish to remind us of our bitter lives.
Originally published in "Rabbis of the Air" (Autumn House Press)
For more information on the Steits Matzo Factory: https://www.tenement.org/blog/remembering-the-streits-matzo-factory/
That was “The Last Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side” by Philip Terman. Thanks for listening.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You'll find more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
