Unnamed Migration Story

COHORT 4

There is lost divinity found

beneath the asphalt of 

Breed Street & the archives

of libraries & delis &

Jewish families & 

the uncertainty of becoming 

something more than just 

a statement in the City of Angels. 

To stand amidst

brown bricks 

in the seafoam light of a star

is to stand

in the intersection of holy

& homeless. Graffiti 

in the arches for the torah 

speak like war speak

like a moment that has existed 

before. I wonder if the hands 

that wrote these slurs 

meant it as religion–

p(s)alms always hold 

onto the creation myth

of giving up. This story, 

buried in crevices,

is never really what it means 

we didn’t mean to leave you

for fairfax or the west 

or the American Dream

abandonment seems to run

in our lineage & our

archaeology & the sunlight still 

moves like honey 

over your architecture 

which is to say 

it moves like diaspora 

in renewal & this is the story

that is never forgotten.

I know this when 

the Jewish in my family 

doesn’t know how

to be religion

only displaced prayers

in some photo album &

an era we wish we could

claim. I know this when 

when fossils lay like graves

& the history missing 

from memory awaits 

for Byzantine Revival.

Writing: Carolyn Stein

Music: Audrey Kang

Art: Kaitlyn Zhou