by Erika Michael
You bear your life on your back
like a snail, in the cells of your gut,
silently piled. But we need those
chronicles concealed within your
head—to have you excavate the
roots of that cerebral flower bed.
Show us your paint-flaked wagon
by the backyard gate—home’s
not yours to slice out of our story
for the bile of war. Consider your
kaleidoscope, the cache of sacred
images stashed among the gyri
and sulci, massed and folded
in that wizened shell we’ll bury,
fading pictures caught in milder
winds or in the sting of alien ice.
This plea’s for you to burnish
memories as bright graffiti on the
pages of your shredded book,
sculpt them on the husks of
progeny, re-collect each acorn
of the oak to plant once more in
plush new beds so they can dig
to find the mulch of mingled
nutrients—the scribbles of their
coil, a chance to mass the stuff
that flickered by their toddler eyes
before they left in tear-soaked
woolies drenched with kisses at
a train, tangled skeins wanting to
be knit again, the faded wreckage
of goodbye. Say how the crunch
of war ground all the action to a halt,
the wedding feast and bridal dress,
the picnics by the willow pond, the
cherries in a crystal bowl, the burials
and Yiskor prayer, words to recollect
that tremolo of emptiness. Speak of
how you wolfed your rage, your pain,
the tang of bittersweet, your hunger
to be rid of belly angst, the minor notes
spit up as shame. Describe it for your
progeny. Talk about seedlings, where
they sprouted, how your sunflowers
spun ‘round as rain pooled in the rubble,
picking strawberries in underbrush,
a drift of spores, the recipes, the chop
and dice of pungency, the waft of
banter—bubbling synesthesia of
the kitchen door. Tell about the light,
how it glinted on the handle of your
leaving, how the seeds you stow still
groan under the stones. Polish all the
tints and tones, hone them to a glitter,
sprinkle them with dendrite gist so
those too little to recall can utter
yes, in my bones—I remember this.
A note from the poet:
As Kobi Sitt, producer of the 2022 film, The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes, has said, “I’m not afraid of the memory, I’m afraid of the forgetfulness.”
We were refugees from Nazi-annexed Austria arriving in New York on the SS Rex in November 1939, after having been in hiding from Hitler’s henchmen for a year and a half. While I was then not yet three, this poem arises out of memories my parents passed on to me about life as it was in Vienna both before and after the Anschluss, and about the tribulations of living as Jews under Nazi occupation before our exodus to the United States.
Writing it has kindled me to recapture some of my earliest recollections, challenging me to reach back to days before conscious pictures imprinted themselves on my mind. And so, to create a more potent chronicle, I relied on scarce stories passed down to me by family, as well as on the old, faded photographs from our disarrayed album. Above all, I’ve attempted to capture the nuanced tang of past events that clung to all the Holocaust-scarred people I was close to while growing up—the congregation of family and friends who silently understood each other. May this poem give voice to their collective breath.
Erika Michael has a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Washington and has taught at Trinity University, Oregon State in Corvallis, and the University of Puget Sound. She has participated in poetry workshops with Carolyn Forché, Thomas Lux, Linda Gregerson, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Tim Siebles, Major Jackson, and Jeffrey Levine. Her work has appeared in Poetica Magazine, Cascade, Drash, Mizmor l’David Anthology, Bracken Magazine, The Winter Anthology, The Institute for Advanced Study Letter, Belletrist Magazine, The Dewdrop, Aletheia Literary Quarterly, and elsewhere. In 2019 she received first prize in the Ekphrastic Poetry Competition at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her first collection, Letting Gravity Speak, is scheduled to appear in early 2023.
Photo: Isabelle Quinn