Member Poem

In the yard of my mind
the grass is always cut every Tuesday.
The dirt, even when wet, doesn’t stick to the bottoms of my feet
but lays like a chalk tapestry.
Silky ribbons of hard lime trail from where the faucet drips down
in a steady pace
beating along with my heart
giving little choice but to move along —
each day a nervous tic on the face of a year.

So far life has not disappointed me in terms of gifts and lemons;
knowledge of how far I have come has not had the desired effect.
Swan diving in the river of my ancestors’ blood
disturbs treasures from the silt:
a piece of tile made by my father’s grandfather
hand-patterned and fired in a bellowed kiln
laid with engineered care and hidden in plain view.
Far back from the street
history still paves these avenues with Jewish dreams.

My Serbian genes fire up with the thundering notes a brass band lets out
on summer streets thick with people flirting, smoking
among them my father, too young to imagine
how he would later do the same on New Mexican soil
in a language that left his tongue perpetually tired.
Nowhere felt like home’s backyard
lined with pear trees and grapes hiding the tiles
now caked with decades of forgotten dust.
Knowing how it split his soul to leave was masked with excitement —
that ache, already arthritic, took its place beside the shed that stored tools
used for his mother’s tomatoes.
Gifts of songs and sips of rakija still buttress his lifeline
to a world as old as the largest empire since Rome.

My mother’s grandmother, decked in furs from the woods
where pagans kept fires burning for the god Perkunas
found herself surrounded —

an island of civility between Nazis and Soviets
intent on taking the land for their own —
fleeing after she buried the family silver and three bottles of turkey in brine.
Three years in 'DP' camps made her steely
life in New Jersey left her hopeless in seeing Kaunas streets again.

Little wonder that my own mother would become her favorite
by the time she died in Virginia
for that steeliness would thicken
the moment her granddaughter stepped out of a train onto Lithuanian territory
heard the language which had her spending every Saturday in school taught by other immigrants
preferring the company of those who knew what it was to be raised by people
who dreamt of silver buried in Soviet grasses.

Hallowed by my mother, kept alive through lived words
there remained a piece of iron will
hammered into the shape of a cross
which led my grandmother through life’s disappointments
kissed for every miracle
retribution in exchange for land theft was sworn by that cross.

Something about oaths, however, is that not all can be fulfilled.
Neither my father nor mother can fire a kiln
bottle turkey in brine
or live for anything that is not here.
Conception in pride alone
is as good as they can earn in foreign currency —
once you leave that land
you’re never really welcomed back.

But I will plow the fields of their memories
tie in sheaves tall stalks of wheat
which I’ll bake into bread
to serve with salt and wine on the well-swept yard
the house of our dreams to our backs
flowers on every border
hands deepened by loam and interwoven with steel
not a single grudge remaining.
Make these genes my guiding star when they, too, are gone.
***

DP = displaced persons