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What Will You Picture in the Haze?
There you are
to the hunched child you were
a warm face pressed against mother
waiting to be numbed and cut,
in surgical gowns. You see yourself
and let me follow toward surgery.
down to the second floor. We'll call for you
Someone came in with a burger, chips and soda
the loss of vision is nothing
through this continual drifting
with no ticket back,
What comes alive in sleep
We got word,
"Details
"Please," I beg, "send
The rain stops; shadows appear like holes
headed for the pumpkin fields. A scent of green
sweats and muddy sneakers, you four drop
When the wagon stops,
one of the colors of the field. Leah
spots Christina and runs
Julia's iridescent parka flickers
of play in this brilliant orange
wagon. I pull uphill, feeling
soon-to-be Jack-o-Lanterns rest
the crescent dark moon cut to smile
party magic—crowds and candles fluttering
hills sit close
you find at the center
around the edges begins
They're born purple in large numbers
almost always dies," the pet
in the far corner of the tank
to the season that is their life
their dead sisters. Most of
Watch the young mother forgetting
in the litter. Watch her panic,
on the edge of all she knows.
The father's off on the side
is a mound of fur over thirsty red
to do her best. One could say
in your hospital gown—
no glasses, hearing aid
makeup or jewels, stripped
in the shadow between lives
in a booming city
and a bombed-out ghetto—
as Nazis came to char your fables.
Your soft eyes are already smoke
in their minds. Here you are
so the lens of your eye can be replaced,
your vision returned.
Around us are ordinary people
in their clean smiles
as someone too temporary
for them to know. They bring a wheelchair
At the double door, they say
"Take a left and a left
and the second elevator
in the waiting room." I could not tell
if the skies were darkening
or if the sun was gone.
in a cardboard box. By then you were under.
There's a history in that darkness. Maybe
I'm there, listening to you tell me
compared to the loss of a mother
or father, a home, love
that should have carried you
in anesthetized space. I think you are
seeing your mother
sending you away
no last embrace that won't let you go.
Will it matter if one
lens replaces another?
you see more vividly than
anything you see
with open eyes.
Arrival
via cousins,
that our grandparents
never made it
to a concentration
camp.
Even though
they had paid for
their own one-way
train ticket,
they were slaughtered
brutally
before they arrived.
too
gruesome
to send
without
request.
Do you
want them?"
they ask
in English
so we
understand.
everything.
Let the reason
I've been crying
and unable to cry
my whole life arrive."
Picking Pumpkins
in the burnt red grass. We get on the hay wagon
is the absence of green. In your Old Navy
like dark ink into my listening.
Michi jumps off and becomes
leaves her print in the steady air,
to help her roll a pumpkin up the hill.
in a breeze, her limbs full
and yellow world. We load the blue
the tug back down. The not-yet-dusted,
in their muddy world. We all imagine
in an orange face around which will grow
in a mist of music. In the smell of fire
to that electric violet
of a stove light. And the black
to end all imagery.
Gerbils
and sniff their way
to mamma's teat. "The first litter
store owner said," but they'll keep
trying." Sure enough, two neglected
lie like little burgundy livers on the ground.
The others wiggle, latching on
like thawing buds, the clement air
the only gap between them and
the second generation survives.
It takes a while to learn to be parents.
the little blackened secrets
sprawled like dance positions
while she looks at eight new wobbling hearts—
tiny volcanoes—that could splatter
Will she eat these babies—
fleshy pink stars?
inspecting the ones
that died early, but she
mouths. I would never call her brave,
honest, dedicated, resilient or determined
simply her body loves
and shivers.
