Gloria Bromberg

My Father’s Florida Driver’s License        

(A winner of the HCR 15th Anniversary Prize)        

 

 

“My first car was a used Model T,”

he once told me. I flash to fuzzy brown 

 

upholstery in the De Soto, gold and white paint job 

on the ‘57 Dodge Coronet that kept 

 

breaking down, fins for tail lights 

on the ‘63 turquoise Caddy he bought 

 

from a neighbor across the street —  too big to fit

our Brooklyn garage. 80 years of driving, and doing it well, 

 

never an accident. At 97, he renewed the license

after getting new insurance — AAA dropped him 

 

due to age. Then he bought a Hyundai Elantra, used it weekly 

racking up 50 miles to and from his girlfriend’s house 

 

in Delray Beach. Below his signature, in red

block letters: ORGAN DONOR. The photo looks 

 

pretty good for an old man: white hair, most of it 

still there; faint smile, jowls. He stayed lucid, 

 

unconcerned about the end, which might come 

anytime. An abdominal aortic 

 

aneurysm, diagnosed at 98. “Get it fixed,” 

I said. “No”, he said, “I’ve had enough.” Two days 

 

after Rosh Hashanah with Jeanette, he stopped

returning calls. My brother flew down 

 

from New York, found him on the bed, fully clothed 

as usual for afternoon nap. Imagine living an entire century

 

plus nine months. At the funeral, I told the grandkids

his real name was Chaim, meaning Life, 

 

which morphed into Herman at Ellis Island 

when he arrived, age 15, with his family from Poland, 

 

two years after the Pinsk Massacre. He quickly learned English, 

then learned to drive. I’ll remember Sunday trips 

 

to Grandma’s for brisket & hot tea in a glass.

Later, how he chauffeured me and three friends

 

to Zacherley’s “Disc-O-Teen” in Newark; traipsed into 

Greenwich Village on a humid Saturday night 

 

when parking was scarce because I had to see Jean Shepherd 

live at the Limelight Cafe. And when teaching me to drive, 

 

demonstrated how to parallel park 

& get it right every time.

 

 

 

 

Sundays in Grandma’s Kitchen

 

When I was seven, she trusted me with hot tea 

in a glass, a bear-shaped jar of honey, small cow-

 

shaped creamer, and a teaspoon. She’d tie a flowered bib apron 

around her sturdy body, attach the heavy silver 

 

meat grinder to the old oak table by turning a nut 

on the C-clamp, with her left hand fed it raw beef 

 

while her right hand turned the crank. In Pinsk, 

she and Grandpa were tailors. In Brooklyn, they lived 

 

above their store, whose blue neon sign blinked 

I. Bromberg & Son, Furriers. 

 

She’d wear custom molded space shoes in black 

or brown leather, the only way to ease her bunions. 

 

Sometimes, she’d disappear into her sewing room while I colored

& drank hot chocolate from a stoneware mug; I’d hear the old Singer 

 

whirr as she worked the treadle. One Sunday 

she surprised me with a reversible cape in red & black 

 

velvet. I could be a vampire or Little Red Riding Hood!

After lighting the pilot on the Wedgwood stove, she rounded 

 

ground meat into fist sized balls, pressed them 

on to a cast-iron skillet with a spatula 

 

till the hamburgers hissed. We each had one, 

centered on thick porcelain plates, ketchup bottle 

 

between us. Ess, ess, she said, 

Eat. I did. We did. We didn’t talk much.

 

We  replayed “Frosty the Snowman” on the Victrola.

When she hugged me goodbye, the scent of sweat & Chanel No 5. 

 

 

 

No One Writes Poems For Me 

 

or paints pictures of me nude

or otherwise. People fall in love

with me, offer plants or food 

and sometimes I get overalls

which aren’t the appropriate 

gesture. I want temporary

immortality, to see myself

through someone else’s eyes,

the double perspective of being

both subject and critic. I’ve written

poems to my first lover, a man 

I lived with, my female lover, 

a close friend, my husband. 

Their responses were not

gratifying. One never 

wrote back; another cried,

then put his fist through

a sheetrock wall. D avoided me

for weeks, then moved

to Hawaii. Carol ignores 

her poem, believes denial

equals eradication. Marty nods

blankly, Very good. I’ve asked

Marty, but he paints blue cubes

and pink airbrushed nudes

whose hazy outlines

are not mine. I want 

a mythology, a full set 

of conflicting rumors 

documented by poems, paintings, 

tapes, photos but as of now 

there is no portfolio. Archivists 

are not yet preparing

the Bromberg Collection. 

When they do they’ll find 

beer cartons full of drafts 

and worksheets, lists 

of disconnected phone numbers, 

but no sketches, bundled letters, 

ephemera anywhere. They’ll say, She was 

a recluse, and She lived the life 

of the mind. The biographer will get it all 

wrong. And if she finds 

this poem, separated 

from the others, in the bottom 

of my night table drawer,

it will be too late 

for rewrites. 

Gloria Bromberg is happily retired after a varied work life as a bookstore clerk, artists’ model, literacy tutor, answering service operator, sex educator, drug counselor and psychotherapist. Her poetry’s been published in Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Berkeley Times, Haight Ashbery Literary Journal and elsewhere. She’s a first year student in the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Berkeley.