Short and sweet, funny and raw - written with clear insight on life in Buffalo NY and elsewhere, this collection explores history, language, nature and identity. Through her imagination, Trudy Stern skillfully harnesses her own mind, memories, and songs. These poems underline the joy that inhabits food, everyday objects, memories, ancestors and the explorations of a poet grounded in place: Buffalo, Jerusalem, the Ozarks, Vermont, from both Jewish and Buddhist perspectives.

“Imagine you’re off to a dinner party, though you don’t know who will be there, or what will be served—but you know the host will be Trudy Stern: open this book; drink from this flask; let me pass you these plums; there will be borscht! That’s what it’s like to read these poems of Trudy’s, which overflow with generosity, even when the subject at hand is far from comfort; where: ‘God is watching at the gate / overcoats and feathers / ears of roses [...] Whose metaphor is this anyway?’ the poet inquires. For some simulacrum permeates the universe, this living; it is dust; or it is the poet observing, from the contours of the body, the marrow of life, ‘with nothing but a butter knife’ at hand. Know there will be enough left over for the squirrels, for the gnats—for the rats! After all: ‘Potatoes were the ships / that brought us to our present shores.’”

—Edric Mesmer