What It Means To Be Lucky

My children worked, slowly, carefully, leaning over the chocolate iridescence. They knew I knew—breakfast would be cake. He funneled his hands for the sprinkles, she poured the letters through—Mazal. There wasn’t room for Tov. They tried to fix it. Where will the Good go, they asked. In their language, Luck + Good = Congrats. They could have only half. They took it.

***

Annie Kantar’s poems and translations of poetry have appeared in The American Literary Review, Barrow Street, Bennington Review, Birmingham Review, Cincinnati Review, Entropy, Gulf Coast, Literary Imagination, Poetry Daily, Poetry International, Rattle, Smartish Pace, Tikkun, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Her translation from the Hebrew of With This Night, the final collection of poetry that Leah Goldberg published during her lifetime, was published by University of Texas Press and  shortlisted for the ALTA Translation Prize. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and Fulbright Scholarship, she has recently completed a literary translation of the Book of Job, for which she was commissioned by Koren Publishers. 

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