We—Detroit girls, Daughters of Motown— 
knew before we saw the bronze casket

that Aretha would be dressed down;  
some—Non-believers, Outsiders— 

called it frivolous: two-day 
viewing; eight-hour long service;

four outfit changes, each dress  
more elaborate than the last. 

Beautiful, beautiful gowns—accessorized  
from jewels to pointed heels. I half-

expect her to break out a side eye 
belt out a hymn to remind us

who the Queen is. There is,  
of course, no such performance, 

though we all huddle like crows,  
waiting to see if she still looks 

like herself. There is a protocol to this,  
a right way to send 

someone back to the lap of God. 
Wearing their Sunday best. 

So fancy they can be  
mistaken for a bride. 

Students of movement play in front of mirrors all day
Students of movement revel in tranquil river babblings daydreaming how they can make those patterns their own
Students of movement have a love-hate relationship with floors, walls, and gravity 
Students of movement study pigeons, worms, dogs, turtles, fishes, snakes, swans...
Students of movement strive to understand their bodies and how their muscles and limbs can transform raw emotion into physical expression
Students of movement respect all genres of dance, martial arts, meditations, and interpretations

Students of movement
Nod to rhythms echoing through hollow stairways
envisioning
fluid patterns
and gravity-defying poses...
...training to each
Subway bus passing
Leaves rattling
Book pages flapping
Audience clapping...
Searching their souls
for the spontaneous
sequence that will
set them free
subsequently
freeing others
fascinating in
the freedom set forth
By
syncopated high-hats
stage shaking stomps
three-second jumps
frictionless spins
and the sheer
beauty of
pure
Movement... 
 

Moon dance,
you were not to blame.

Nor you,
lovely white moth.

But I saw you together.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
   The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
   And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
   When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
   Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
   And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
   You may forever tarry.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

^{translated from the Ukrainian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky}

Emptiness lives inside a radio 
and newspapers are now printed without letters.

I walk up the street
but I don’t (do I?) hear my own steps.
I notice an acquaintance across the street,
and call out to him to say 
hello, but bullets of silence fly from my mouth.

I start shouting with my hands
but my fingers are bent, crooked at my fingers.

But it’s just (or is it?) a dream, just a dream
which pretends it is an emptiness, inside a radio. 

ТІЛЬКИБ СОН

Радіо всередині пусте і чорне
і газети тепер друкують без букв

Іду вулицею
але не чую власних кроків
помічаю знайомого з іншого боку вулиці
і гукаю його щоб привітатись
але з мого рота вилітають кулі мовчання
які чомусь не схожі на кулі тиші

Починаю кричати йому руками
але мої пальці вигнуті
мої пальці криві й покручені

Та це тільки сон
тільки сон

Little soul lost, little shining ghost, prepare yourself to descend
into the small chambers that flicker like fireflies. Prepare cattle
& rapid fire which should be the pallor, tenderness of patient flowers.

I want to tell you about my childhood, ten times the nerve, which is
stitching darkness, which is mine alone tattooed, black as the black
craters in an isthmus, worse than the worst mind during the war
deranged, always the strange order of smoke, always in praise
of the elder tongue, which I’d like to think, is afraid of the dark forest
of trees. But never mind all that, how it mocks what is & what is not.

All the while I didn’t know when I claimed you my apostrophe
I meant an adagio with ink, meant dead ringer in the wind, but worst.

What remains is this deer at the edge of the woods, my dappled antlers
my toiled meaning & no meaning making music like a heretic. After all
what is a soul crawling out of the black dirt if it has no teeth or nails.

one can repeat anything they like 
it’s just dead now and beaten 
there’s a wire 
in the belt of my brain 
and don’t smoke 
you difficult person 
there’s a wire 
picking up missiles on the strip 
breaking space and time with 
an iron sound iron sound 
I can’t go to sleep or unsee life , 
time makes change possible and 
is currently menacing . in this way , 
one learns the simple , vertiginous 
depth of problems , the dead weight 
of forms and the hyenic laughter 
of matthew miller which all meaning 
requires one to reject – the content of life 
is essentially general , not actually . a little fear of god , 
and the heat currents shutting down , 
all shot through with the arrows of slavery 
and white phosphorus . it’s a total 
global project . the fish are still full of mercury – 
he said it cuz he didn’t like it , 
and now we have to dislike it forward , 
with all the implications bursting . I can’t shut my eyes , 
babies with flies on they face – and writing 
with the song cuz conditions have not 
given the means to surpass it . 
this is the end of something . these are the words , 
I’m serious , of serious people , 
awake unsustainably

No, we are not going to die.

The sounds you hear

knocking the windows and chipping the paint

from the ceiling, that is a game

the world is playing.

Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can

and count the beats of our own hearts.

Good. Like that. Lay your hand

on my heart and I’ll lay mine on yours.

Which one of us wins

is the one who loves the game the most

while it lasts.

Yes, it is going to last.

You can use your ear instead of your hand.

Here, on my heart.

Why is it beating faster? For you. That’s all.

I always wanted you to be born

and so did the world.

No, those aren’t a stranger’s bootsteps in the house.

Yes, I’m here. We’re safe.

Remember chess? Remember

hide-and-seek?

The song your mother sang? Let’s sing that one.

She’s still with us, yes. But you have to sing

without making a sound. She’d like that.

No, those aren’t bootsteps.

Sing. Sing louder.

Those aren’t bootsteps.

Let me show you how I cried when you were born.

Those aren’t bootsteps.

Those aren’t sirens.

Those aren’t flames.

Close your eyes. Like chess. Like hide-and-seek.

When the game is done you get another life.

I take the train to Auschwitz from the white
Kraków of Mongols and Copernicus
to the extermination camp, and night
of nights for souls herded by Brownshirt soulless.
Soon after the war, the train’s almost empty.
I step on the rust platform where SS
Schutzstaffel doctor Josef Mengele,
for lined-up Jews, chose barracks or gas shower.

Baby shoes, ovens. Gallows for the unruly.
The Arbeit Macht frei gate. I leave the tower-
ing smokestacks, trudge back to the platform. Truly 
gruesome. Bored, stunned by time, a workman
drops a coin in the jukebox just above
us: “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band.”
The beat’s so strong we tap our feet, and kiss
the poisoned air with “All You Need Is Love.”

i 



            it is a terror

in the closet   her knees

are limp     eyes straining to see 

every object glows with a 

private halo     pulling down

her skirt       the trickle 

of urine along her thigh and calf

she wipes it carelessly with her hand

biting her lips she fixates on

pebbles and rusty nails along 

the path to the truck            it is an oblivion

seen in matter-of-fact gestures

wiping the child’s nose with her fingers

she says     blow     his eyes shine     as she 

feels the pressure of the doorknob        palms 

wet slipping out of her grasp            she whispers

not now        not yet       we’ve been so careful

he’s a good child         just a little more time

she pleads with them       we will not be 

careless anymore         this time the knob falls 

into the glare of lights        voices scream

orders she does not understand    but obeys

blow    she tells him pulling down her skirt

and wiping his nose with her fingers     later

it is still over      has been over 

since the knob slipped from her hand

like the wet fish that jumped while she tried

to scale it      later after the not yet

not now       the walk nude across the yard

she glimpses the meaning of the order

allows her eyes to widen for one

moment and see the path             it is a coldness

never before felt or imagined       she clutches 

her hands tearing at her thighs    wailing 

to the others she tries to lean on them

to explain the mistake    the small error

nothing is irrevocable     she screams     nothing 

to them trying to lean      they push her away

and her hands cup the knob     for a better hold

to keep out the light        her world is cement

stone    iron 





ii



listening to conversations        over brandy

i am always amazed at their certainty

about the past      how it could have been

different      could have been     turned around

with what ease       they transport themselves

to another time/place      taking the comfort

confidence of an after-dinner drink



                       it would be too impolite

of me to say       my mother hid with me

for two years among ignorant peasants    who

would have turned us in      almost at once      had 

they known who we were      who would have watched 

with glee while we were carted off      even though

grandad had bounced me on his knees and fed me 

from his own spoon      and my mother is a frightened 

woman 



                        it would be too impolite 

to say     you do not know yourselves     you do not know 

others

^{“With our despised immigrant clothing, we shed also our impossible Hebrew names.” —Mary Antin, The Promised Land  (1912)}

My great-uncle Vincent, son of the Milk Street tailor, 
threw some fairy dust into the air and changed, 
making it easy for me to go to the prom, 
to grow up in Indiana and bite my tongue 
when a hick would cuss at the bastard who tried 
to Jew me down on the price for home-grown pot. 
Like wool pants for blue jeans, Moshe, Shmuel and Lazar 
traded in their names, and in exchange were changed 
from cabbage-eaters into Americans, and why not? 
“I never was a pumpkin!,” cries the carriage. 
“I never was a pauper!,” shouts the prince.
In this fairy tale all the steins turn into stones, straw turns 
to gold, stars warp into crosses, and the pauper trades up 
and leaves the trades to the star-crossed Jews. 

I’m a lousy Jew, ignorant of nearly everything 
except that in another time the Klan would lynch me, 
the Nazis flay me into yellow lampshades. 
My white hide hides me, my baseball cap keeps greasy ash 
out of my hair, and I’m glad for my nice name. 
Who needs a life so grim? In the shtetl, the old Jews 
would change their names so the Angel of Death 
flying on black crape wings above the town, 
fatal list in hand, would pass over them
—but not the ones who stayed behind 
and kept their names, the Adelsteins, Eisensteins 
or the one I’ll never know, some cousin twice removed 
born in Poland, some Maurice Bernstein. No way to gather 
smoke out of the sky and give him flesh again. 

I imagine him, with eyes like mine, intent 
and studious, staring at the rusted cattle-car wall 
in the rattling stink of packed bodies, trying not to breathe. 
He’ll get that wish soon enough. 
Slender, bookish children aren’t good workers 
and it’s too much trouble to take away their names 
and write numbers in their skin. 
They’re gassed like fleas. 
I’m a lousy Jew, but I’d like to disturb the grass, 
unearth him from the crowded grave, and let his damp fingers 
write this story, while his eyes like clouded marble roll. 
I’d like to roll the story back to the dead boy 
swaying in the train, to see him there imagining the sky 
he hasn’t seen for days, the white winter sky, like a page 
he could write on again and again, practicing his name.