Ilya Kaminsky

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

I cover the eyes of Gena, 7, and Anushka, 2, as their father drops his trousers to be searched, and his flesh shakes, and around him: silence’s gross belly flaps. The crowd watches. The children watch us watch: soldiers drag the naked man up the staircase. I teach his children’s hands to make of anguish a language — see how deafness nails us into our bodies. Anushka speaks to homeless dogs as if they are men, speaks to men as if they are men and not just souls on crutches of bone. Townspeople watch children but feel under the bare feet of their thoughts the cold stone of the city.

What is a man? A quiet between two bombardments.

I am not a poet, Sonya I inspect the fragrant feet of younger ladies—

I look at you, Alfonso and say to the late caterpillars good morning, Senators! this is a battle worthy of our weapons.

Dr. Alfonso Barabinsky wants to go outside I hold him down with my smaller body. He walks, runs from his shoes to my kitchen. He is drinking in my kitchen, He swims in my kitchen with his varicose fat legs. Alfonso, you fool. You think it is brave to drink vodka all morning on an empty stomach. The walls of our apartment flash. The walls of our apartment stand. They are bombing his hospital. He washes my face. He fingerspells the names of patients. The shadow of his fingers huge on the whitewashed wall. The walls of our apartment flash. When the bombs fall we make children. He kneels and kisses through my skin the shape of our only child. They are bombing his office. Takes his glasses off and lays them on the table like a shining weapon. Throws his t-shirt at our cat, fat hangs over his belt. Pulls a stolen lemon out his pocket. They are bombing his hospital office, But I am a ripe woman a man could be happy.

Through Vasenka: a herd of boys runs. With their icy hands they haul a policeman and for an apple a look they display the man on the asphalt. Snow falls in his nostrils. I watch him. They circle his eyes with a red pencil. They teach his neighbors to spit in two red holes. I watch the snowflakes melt in their hair. The neighbor aims in the red circle, spits. I stand on a park bench and chew snow. Boys walk west of Tedna, carrying snowflakes in their hair. A neighbor aims in the hole, spits. Walking by night with their arms lifted up from their bodies. As if they were about to leave the earth. And were trying out the wind.

I watch loud animal bones in their faces & I can smell the earth. Our boys want a public killing in a sunlit piazza They drag a young policeman, a sign in his arms swaying

“You must speak not only of great devastation but of women kissing in the yellow grass!” I heard this not from a great philosopher but from my brother Tony

Don’t forget this: Men who live in this time remember the price of each bottle of vodka. Sunlight on the canal outside the train-station. With the neighbor’s ladder, my brother Tony “Mosquito” and I climb the poplar in the public garden with one and a half bottles of vodka and we drink there all night. Sunlight on a young girl’s face, asleep on the church steps. Tony recites poems, forgets I cannot hear. I watch the sunlight in the rearview mirror of trolleys as they pass. Don’t forget this. There sat in the poplar two brothers, the barber and podiatrist, in love with the same woman. They drank there and recited each poem they knew. Not a soul noticed: notasoul.