Marion Cohen

Brave
  
  
My friend sends me a NYTimes article about Nazi-fighting Jewish women during the holocaust, and she asks, “Do you think you would have been as brave as these women?” 
  
  
 It depends, maybe, on where I ‘d be coming from 
 my base life, so to speak. 
 If I was coming from a happy, or writing, life 
 I might not want to give that up. But if my base life was unhappy, non-writing  
 I just might want to exchange it for a life of nazi-fighting.  
  
 O, I have been brave in many ways
 and it takes some bravery to be a writer 
 but am I brave enough to be a nazi-fighter? 
 Am I brave enough, period? 
  
 Well, we’re none of us perfectly brave. 
 I’m brave enough to be a writer 
 and a bereaved parent 
 and to be, first, a well spouse 
 now a former well spouse. 
 I’m brave enough to write controversial
 be unfavorably reviewed. 
 My friend writes that she was brave enough to go across the seas and hitchhike 
 but not brave enough to try LSD.
 And she reminds me that I was brave – well, adventurous enough, she says
 to have children.
 I was brave enough to take tests in school
 oral tests too
 defend my doctoral dissertation
 but not brave enough to be a defendant. 
 I’m brave enough to make dentist appointments
 and show up for them. 
 But am I brave enough to dye my hair blonde, pass as non-Jew 
 and point-blank keep shooting Nazis? 
 Am I brave enough to look my killers in their eyes?
 Am I brave enough to flirt with nazi officers
 seduce nazi officers
 brave enough to infiltrate? 
 And am I brave enough to jump from a moving train?
  
 Well, I have escaped
 many times.
 I have rescued myself
 and, on a number of specific occasions
 I have rescued my children.
  
 But can I be an actor? 
 Can I even die my hair blonde to pass as non-Jew? 
 Can I bargain with police, go to weekly church services? 
  
 Well, the character I play is myself. 
 I do that in my teaching and my poetry readings. 
 I do that the rest of the time, too. 
 But that’s probably the only character I can play. 
 It sometimes requires being brave but maybe not THAT brave.
  
 And could I sneak in and out? 
 Could I smuggle? Could I hide? 
 Could I work for the Gestapo, steal documents and dynamite? 
 Could I sleep in a cellar, meaning bugs and rats? 
 Could I amputate a soldier’s wounded finger with my teeth?
  
 Well, I have witnessed my first husband’s medical procedures
 comforted him when the nurses could not.
 And I know
 for sure
 that I would kill in self-defense. 
 And in a heartbeat
 I would kill to defend others.
 I would poke my fingers into eyes
 I would pull the trigger
 and I would not hesitate.
 I would do it in time.
 I also remember that, after seven years of very hardcore at-home care giving
 I would have taken the children
 and run away from home. 
  
 But could I participate in combat missions? 
 Could I cross mountains by foot? 
 Could I travel by underground railroad? 
 Could I, travelling by regular railroad 
 convince the engineer
 to expel an extra puff of smoke to hide my departure from the engine? 
  
 Well, I have convinced publishers to publish me. 
 I have convinced colleges to hire me? 
 I have convinced two men to marry me? 
 But could I, like Faye Schulman,
 when it was all over
 but teenage-hood also all over
 write “When it was time to hug a boyfriend, I was hugging a rifle.” 
  
 Well, my adolescence felt less like hugging boyfriends than hugging rifles. 
 And I was brave enough to hug math books and my diary. 
 And I have, throughout my life, been called by friends and admirers
 things like “strong woman”, “quite a human being”,
 “you play the cards you’ve been dealt with grace”. 
 And I’ve saved lives. Well, emotional lives. 
 “You helped me more than both my therapist and my support group.” 
 “I could never have gone through this without your book.” 
 Indeed, I have many great blurbs for my books, and also for my life. 
 I can be and am proud of many things. 
 But have I ever been called “brave”? 
 Have I been complimented with that exact word?
  
 I don’t remember. I know that I have had physical ten-pain for months at a time.
 I know that I have rescued myself 
 allowed my self to rescue my self. 
 (I have an article titled “Our Selves to the Rescue”.)
 But have I risked my life? I’ve risked my ego and my reputation but maybe not my life. 
 I’m afraid of both pain and death. 
 And, again, am I brave? Am I as brave as those women nazi-fighters?
  
 Probably not. So I console myself via a question: 
 Were those nazi-fighters perhaps not-brave in the ways in which I’m brave? 
 Were they not quite emotionally brave (like emotionally intelligent)?
 In particular, when they had finished their eras of fighting nazis? 
 did they have, say, relationship problems? 
 Did many of them, as the article says, “remain mostly silent about it. Silence was a way of
    coping”? 
 Did they deny, clam up, not tell, not write, or write but not about that? 
 Did some of them decline to have children when they might have loved to? 
 Did they “start afresh”, as the article says, but in denying, forgetting ways?.
 Did they need but refuse therapy? 
 Were they guilty of some or all of the above
 as guilty as I am of not being all that brave?
  
 Yes, I console myself with questions like those? 
 Or I try. I try. 
 I suppose it’s somewhat brave 
 to try.  

Copyright by Marion Deutsche Cohen 

Author’s Statement:

For this poem I merged two past-poems of my own – “Good and Selfish,” from my new book, Stress Positions (Alien Buddha Press) and “The Long Haul,” from The Project of Being Alive (New Plains Press) – and a recent New New York Times Article, “The Nazi-Fighting Women of the Jewish Resistance.”I think the title of the article is self-explanatory, and the reason I made use of the article to write the above poem is in the epigraph to the poem. (Namely, the article, and a friend, prompted me to ask myself: “Am I brave?”).

Bio:

Marion Deutsche Cohen is the author of 32 collections of poetry or memoir; her newest poetry collection is “Stress Positions” (Alien Buddha Press), and her latest prose collection is “Not Erma Bombeck: Diary of a Feminist 70s Mother” (Alien Buddha Press). She is also the author of a book of #MeToo poems, two controversial memoirs about spousal chronic illness, a trilogy diary of late-pregnancy loss, and “Crossing the Equal Sign”, about the experience of mathematics. She teaches a course she developed, Mathematics in Literature, at Drexel University’s Honors College. Other interests are classical piano, singing, Scrabble, thrift-shopping, four grown children, two grown step-children, and six grands. Her website is  marioncohen.net .

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