Home Remedy

Everybody’s got their roaches of the mind
is my mother’s best saying.

Yes, and if we’re crazy,
history is responsible.

On the border,
my passport holds our progress in stasis.

The border guards gather—
vested, with drug-sniffing

cocker spaniels, loupes,
and scanners—to examine

my customs stamps: Boryspil,
Boryspil, Boryspil, Donetsk.

Our train lingers
in the fields between nations.

Later, an American businessman tells me
the ’90s were a fun time to be in Ukraine.

All the deals to be had! In those years
my aunt ate grass.

She learned which made the best approximation
of tea; which could abate hunger.