One Friday, after we sang Umiak, Kayak,
Mukluk, Tupik, and another song
about how Bahama grass killed Cousin Helen
Brown’s yams, Mrs. Steinberg taught us
to play a Yiddish lullaby on our recorders.
She told us how her grandfather survived
the Holocaust by crawling onto a pile of corpses,
wrenching one on top of him, faking death.
Even the loud boys held their breath.
Wetness glossed her eyes as she packed
up the instruments she traveled with
from class to class, an autoharp, triangles,
bells for holiday songs, sheet music, extra
recorders for students who forgot theirs.
Music Education
Dorian Kotsiopoulos has featured at various poetry venues in Massachusetts, including the Brookline Public Library, the Loring-Greenough House in Jamaica Plain, and the Fuller Art Museum in Brockton. Her work has appeared in literary and medical journals, including Poet Lore, Salamander, Slipstream, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, On the Seawall, and Smartish Pace. She is a member of the Jamaica Pond Poets.