History and Other Poems

History

I’m the face above your face

observing you darkly,

orphaned by the cold dawn of December.

Do you remember nothing from your life?

The paper triple-folded

in your backpack, unloosening

a tie. And how you moved through doorways

terminally disaffected, on occasion paralyzed

by the usual questions.

Listen: flags

summersault under your window.

A spent voice is singing

Lili Marlene.

Do you remember

nothing from your life?

Do you not recognize this face

above your face, observing you darkly.

The alarm clock

shudders awake. Outside the armies

are already marching, and you, half-asleep,

follow their beat.

Monologue for a second date

Mostly, I stare at the ceiling and think

about how much I don’t want to die. I have a head.

In my head is a circle farm. A woman waves

from a burning roof. There’s also falling

from sixth-floor

balconies, windshields,

suicide bombers, stairs, my eyeballs smeared

against the windshield, safety pins, shawls

caught in car wheels, knots, snowdrops.

I have a head. In my head is a stomach

full of butterflies. The butterflies are often sharks

and they want out. I let them out.

They trip on the threshold and smash their teeth.

I have a head. Inside is a living room. A suicide bomber’s

watching syndicated comedy. My head plays

only reruns, cleaner ads, wet floors,

skulls cracked open. Nothing after that. All dark, all

air chastising its emptiness into the thought of you.

I squeeze my eyeballs shut

and think of you. I think of you

in as many ways as the rain falls.

Why speak

Because air.

Because air is weightless yet holds

all that exists. Because the steppes are crushed

Sicilian oranges and smell of gunpowder.

Because in heaven grandmother still darns

her wool socks, because I can still

hear her say: there’s a darkness in my eyes today.

Because the world is full of eyes.

Because curtains in windows, in houses still standing.

Because somewhere in Slavonija, in an unmarked grave,

lies a little girl. Because grandmother

was the first woman in her village to leave

a name instead of a fingerprint on the marriage certificate.

Because I still don’t know all of your names.

Because nice to meet you,

Isidora. Because at the border, behind barbed wire,

a man raises his right hand.

Because gods are great only when they’re human.

Because I can’t forget what I’ve seen:

ships and lighthouses, a flag

in a throat cut open,

the serenity of butchers.

Because we are guilty, although our eyes are born innocent.

Because autumn crocus on balconies.

Because the unrest of the just.

Because light has to traverse

such solitude to reach us. The world

is full of eyes. Because some eyes

can never again close.