Excerpt

18 Reasons Why I Haven’t Lost Weight

1.     Because if I crunch enough of these potato chips it might drown out the house full of people who have shown up to say they are sorry.  I offer them some of my chips.

2.     Because chicken noodle soup, even with extra noodles, can’t really cure everything but damned if I’m not going to try.

 3.     Because the mirrors are already covered up for shiva, so I won’t have to see the extra chin I’ve acquired.

4.     Because it’s too difficult to count calories when I’m busy counting books as I pack them up into banker boxes. I am up to fifty-one boxes.

 5.     Because my heart broke and rainbow cookies keep showing up as more people come to make a shiva call.  But no matter how bright the red, green and yellow layers, all is gray.

 6.     Because if I eat enough Jeni’s Blackout Chocolate Cake ice cream I can become big enough to fill not just my seat but his as well at Ari’s college graduation and Max’s wedding and my book launch and Dave’s retirement party and all the simchas to come. 

 7.     Because egg rolls, falafel, and apple fritters are indicative of my physical and mental state. Fried.

8.     Because tacos fall apart as easily as I do.

9.     Because pastrami on rye is salty enough to mask the taste of my own tears.

10.  Because the skin of barbecued chicken crackles. The meat almost tender. The core raw. Especially when he was at the grill.

11.  Because schnitzel makes sense when coated in grief.

12.  Because Orville Redenbacher’s Butter Gourmet microwave popcorn seems appropriate given that my world has been nuked.

13.  Because I can’t track grams of protein and carbs when I’m busy tracking down investment accounts, retirement benefits, and vintage furniture stores that might be interested in his mid-century modern bedroom set.

14.  Because brisket is so tender it falls off the bone. Like I do.

15.  Because pizza.

16.  Because we need ten people to say Kaddish and these decadent chocolate truffles are worthy of being worshiped. I decide eating them is like a minyan in my mouth.

17.  Because grief is an acquired taste that becomes more palatable with each sip.

18.  Because my father died.

About the Poet

Debbie Feit is an unrelenting Jewish mother, accidental mental health advocate, and author of texts to her kids that often go unanswered. Her work has appeared in Abandon Journal, Beautiful Things, Five South, HAD, Harbor Review, Kveller, The New York Times, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, and Unbroken, as well as on her mother’s bulletin board. She is the author of The Parent’s Guide to Speech and Language Problems (McGraw-Hill), the result of spending six years driving her two kids to speech therapy. Brooklyn-born and bred, she lives in the suburbs of Detroit with her mini sheepadoodle who refuses to leave her side, and her husband who refuses to acknowledge crumbs on the kitchen counter. She would kill for a New York black and white.

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Instagram @debbiefeit

Praise for the Chapbook

Debbie Feit writes with tenderness and grit about the landscape of grief after her father’s death. These lyrical narratives join us to life in celebration of death. These poems, alive with sorrow and small salvations, gather up the shards of memory, ritual, and unexpected joy that emerge in mourning. Feit shows how grief is not just endured but held. These poems are their own Kaddish. Their own visit in prayer for the blessing of memory. With swiftness in detail and an eye for the ordinary quiet radiance of everyday things, this chapbook reminds us that in the wreckage that comes with loss, there can still be connection, resilience, and a strange, stubborn beauty that one can devour with any kind of fork, plastic or steel, or better yet, with the ten fingers of both hands. 

— Matthew Lippman, author, We Are All Sleeping with Our Sneakers On

Feit’s poetry powerfully, and with great grace, examines inheritance and all that it entails, both what we are left and what we choose to carry forward. 

— Diane Gottlieb, editor, Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture & Heritage

The grief, humor, love, and anger accumulate piece by piece in Debbie Feit’s The Power of the Plastic Fork until by the end of this cathartic book we are both devastated and enlightened.  

— Trisha Arlin, liturgist, author of Place Yourself: Words of Prayer and Intention

What a pleasure for the reader to bear witness, for Feit possesses the rare ability to infuse searing moments of loss and regret with humor.

— Tina Barry, author, I Tell Henrietta and Beautiful Raft

Any one of these ten individual poems would have been enough, dayenu, to move me to tears. The eleventh poem—that is to say the collection as a whole—is a true masterpiece. One need not be Jewish or a fatherless daughter to appreciate the depth of love contained in these pages. I thank the author for allowing me the privilege of bearing witness to her grief.

— Lesléa Newman, author, I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father

Debbie Feit artfully weaves a sardonic wit and a respectful reverie to create poems that embody the complexities of modern Jewish identity and filial piety. What an inspiring new voice to add to the canon of Jewish poetry.

— Lynne Golodner, author of Cave of Secrets and I Love You, Charlie Tanner

More About this work

Father, Faith, and Finding My Voice : the poet discusses family, culture, faith, language & poetry on Taran Singh’s podcast “The Mountain in Us.”