Stalin's Ghost
He sets paper sailboats afloat on the pond,
combs the water with his fingers so the boats
move forward as if propelled by waves.
He looks up at the sky and wonders how
the sun manages to float up there on its own.
My grandfather asks him why he had to die
of starvation and exhaustion in the gulags,
why after surviving Hitler’s demonic reign
did they force him into the Red army
and promptly ship him off to Siberia?
But Stalin cannot hear him, nor can
he hear the millions of other dead
that have followed him to the edge of the pond.
Why do you not suffer, demand the murdered poets.
What kind of justice is this? they ask.
A purple butterfly lands on Stalin’s hand.
I will let you live, he whispers,
and releases it into the burning forest.
Nightmare Song
I struggle to see over the shoulders of naked
and shivering men, boys, girls, women holding
babies. We turn a corner where bodies sway
from ropes, heads bowed and lolling
as if in prayer, beneath a rusted sky
straining to stay afloat.
It’s the same dream again and again.
Helmeted men without faces swing clubs
at our heads, beat us forward, forward.
They’re feeding the monster Jews,
its mouth a yawning black and toothless hole,
tongue flopping like a dirty wet mattress,
insatiable. Gunshots pierce the shroud
of stifled weeping.
Our hands no longer
our hands.
Dying Of Thirst, Surrounded By Water
There we were, walking the line along
death’s precipice, mother trying on hats
in heaven’s department store.
Across the street, whores whistled
bitter schlaffmusik to lull the actuaries
into hypnotic grief. We tried
calling home but the telephone wires
had been ripped out by raccoons
or the government. I held the last
dime in my sweaty palm. Father had
a way with words, commanded them
stand tall as corn in August.
Since he’s gone there’s been a loud
silence, the hum of climate control
shifting the direction of my thoughts.
Bread refuses to rise even when
I strum the national anthem
along my pelvis. Always there,
always forgotten, my coccyx
connects me to what we always were.
*
Maybe it’s the rain or the spring
in the heel of my shoe or the cicada’s
shed overcoat alone on a lawn chair,
but something’s been telling me,
whispering in my ear, dance, or maybe
it’s once, or maybe dunce. Fire’s music
whorls through the wild conifers,
spreading the latest conspiracy
darkening the dark web.
How much of the soul is metaphor?
Someone said, you can’t overestimate
the body’s desire for eternity.
A baby’s finger clenches like its pulling
a trigger. Is its first instinct to kill?
I turn away in disbelief.
Chatter like fat in a flame.
*
Corpses burst out of their wooden pods
claw their way to the surface,
and forage the forest floors for guns.
I hide among the leaves and needles,
dreaming of another kingdom, another time.
Is this what trauma does? A bed might be
a bomb, a bomb might be a bed,
or maybe just a briefcase left innocently
by the embassy door. I have so many keys,
I can’t remember what they’re for.
The dead sit hunched, nodding in agreement,
emptying their pockets, dragonflies drying
transparent wings on their naked skulls.
One pulls a bullet from his temple, sets
it down on a stump with a little tap.
There’s always an eighty-four percent chance
of winning Russian roulette
for whoever goes first.
*
The crowd celebrates the return of
the father. Kismet, they say. Savior,
they whisper. Messiah, they think.
Each hair on my head extends its
root down into my brain where the masses
gather, staring in wonder at the dome of sky.
Mother holds a box of sea salt. Kosher,
of course. That’s the spirit! Spiritus mundi?
Make like a rabbit and burrow deep,
she says. I dig up their graves but find
only empty orange shells.
A jet plane stitches the sky closed.
I throw another stick in the fire.
Father says, stop crying
and smile for the camera.