Someone has accidentally set the forest on fire
and having clocked in for the day I turn
this catastrophe into a little poem.
Some days writing feels like this
an animal presents itself to you
and asks to be remembered
maybe the rabbit chewing dandelions in your yard
or the bat gliding over your head in the auditorium.
As much as you may want to move on, the animals
will follow. Today is a quiet day and I am stuck
checking inventory. The things I don’t want to remember
I shove in drawers that no one will open,
memories where I was harmed,
no, memories where I was loved.
At the market in Odessa
my grandfather waits for me.
It is my turn to haggle over
the price of strawberries,
once again I am too American
for this moment, he wants me to
do what I have been taught to do
he wants me to survive. He is of course
dead, leading me through this life
by hiding images throughout the world,
used paper towels that I have learned to
fold and store beneath the sink, half-rotten tea
bags that I will return to the soil, and pickle
jars that now hold soup and rainwater.
Back at the market, I follow my grandfather
through the meat section and stop
at the butchered animals
be specific he tells me
and I return to my desk
to write about the concrete apartment
building where my grandfather
watered white roses on our balcony
in Odesa, where bombs now fly
into buildings, into this building
‍into the cracked sink
and pictures of dead
relatives and the rug nailed
to the wall that my father
smuggled on a train
from Czechslovakia
and the books, and the old
domino set with the carving
of the naked woman on the
cover, tits out and bush on fire
and oh the crystal shot glasses
that only remnant from my grandfather’s
wedding, the day he married a woman
who made the best syrniki in the world.
Here,

sit down and eat.