How to Be a Jewish Woman in Amerikkka while Your Friends Sleep Fitfully in War Zones | Mara Lee Grayson
“I saw in my mind’s eye the fleeting image of a tiger, poised for attack… Unlike the impala, though, we tend to have trouble returning to normal after being in this state.” – Peter Levine
Arrange your body on the dais. Be the script
of Sunday’s sermon: wrath & fear, &
their
belief
that G-d & mortal beings chose this
world for you.
Hide your father’s star between your breasts; wear Mother’s
white fur stole like skin. Tie yourself in knots,
undo
the binds,
embrace the dissonance (or don’t)
Then drive
alone to Monticello, pace the grounds,
trod-down
by unpaid sweat & violence. Cross the country, slow
through sovereign lands & sundown towns
(knuckle-grey your grip, keep the music
low) where liminality, intangible
distinguishes geography from place,
and women
like you know the steps from door to shelter,
There, they huddle close
until the sirens cease, at least tonight
so visit Rushmore, mount its face
& smile! (unnatural as eight eyes, four
mouths of stone.)
Go!!
Climb the crown of Lady Liberty to set
her torch on fire.
Become your own panopticon,
project yourself in all directions, spiral in
& look around: No tiger in the corner now.
The tiger’s in your ribcage, scraping at your lungs.
Mara Lee Grayson’s poem was selected as the 2026 Honeybee Poetry Prize winner by Marya Hornbacher. Marya had this to say about the selection process and the poem…
Unsurprisingly, this was a difficult decision – the poems selected as finalists were remarkable in both caliber and range. After repeated readings, considerable deliberation, and a good deal of sitting with each piece, I have selected “How to be a Jewish Woman in Amerikkka while Your Friends Sleep Fitfully in War Zones” as the winner.
While its timeliness is undeniable – and brutal, and vital – the poem’s urgency and power derives as much from its linguistic and imagistic precision as from the subject matter. A palpable undercurrent of fury, desperation, and fear – not merely the speaker’s – is contained and given shape by the poet’s exacting syntactical design. Far from lessening its impact or cooling the poem’s fire, this deliberate restraint heightens the reader’s sense that the poem – like its subject – is barely contained, and may yet burn out of control.
Bonus audio of Mara reading her poem…
Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, and Nimrod, among other literary journals, and has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. An award-winning scholar of rhetorics of racism and antisemitism, Grayson is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and was previously a tenured professor in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey.