Dennis J Bernstein
Dreamsscape With Ethel and Jules Rosenberg
(Inspired by their Death House Letters)
The Hurricane stalled over the Hudson. They could see her churning
from their separate jail-cells on Death Row. Could hear the boats in-harbor
rearing back against the cinch, like wild stallions, rising to break their ties
with humanity. In the midst of the storm, Julius hears Ethel across the empty
prison yard, singing a freedom sonata. He recalls the peach pit the prisoners
had planted in the prison yard months before, that was stubbornly blossoming
in the shade, through a fracture in the crumbling cement.
Bio
Dennis J Bernstein is author, most recently, of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, which received the 2012 Literary Achievement Award from Artist Embassy International. His poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Chimaera, Bat City Review, The Progressive, Texas Observer, ZYZZYVA, Red River Review, etc Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, writes that Special Ed "...is art turned to us through the eyes of love." Carol Smaldino says in The Huffington Post that the poems remind us how "...we are all connected to the sorrows as well as to the grandness of being human..."Bernstein, who holds a master's degree in Education, has also taught media literacy and special education, working in some of the poorest communities in New York City and New York State. He has also taught writing and reading literacy in various prisons in New York City and New York State, for the CCNY/John Jay College and Mercy College.