wrapping the body of my pregnant wife—
Tonight
we don’t die and don’t die,
the earth is still,
a helicopter eyeballs my wife—
On earth
a man cannot flip a finger at the sky
because each man is already
a finger flipped at the sky.
Checkpoints
In the streets, soldiers install hearing checkpoints and nail announcements on posts and doors:
DEAFNESS IS A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE. FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION ALL SUBJECTS IN CONTAMINATED AREAS MUST SURRENDER TO BE QUARANTINED WITHIN 24 HOURS!
Sonya and Alfonso teach signs in Central Square. When a patrol walks by, they sit on their hands. We see the Sergeant stop a woman on her way to the market, but she cannot hear. He loads her into a truck. He stops another. She does not hear. He loads her into a truck. A third points to her ears.
In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade.
Before the War, We Made a Child
I kissed a woman
whose freckles
arouse the neighbors.
She had a mole on her shoulder
which she displayed
like a medal for bravery.
Her trembling lips
meant come to bed.
Her hair waterfalling in the middle
of the conversation meant
come to bed.
I walked in my barbershop of thoughts.
Yes, I thieved her off to bed on the chair
of my hairy arms—
but parted lips
meant bite my parted lips.
Lying under the cool
sheets. Sonya!
The things we did.
As Soldiers Choke the Stairwell
As soldiers stomp up the stairs—
my wife’s
painted fingernail scratches
and scratches
the skin off her leg, and I feel
the hardness of bone underneath.
It gives me faith.
4 a.m. Bombardment
My body runs in Arlemovsk Street, my clothes in a pillowcase:
I look for a man who looks
exactly like me, to give him my Sonya, my name, my shirt—
It has begun: neighbors climb the trolleys
at the fish market, breaking all
their moments in half. Trolleys burst like intestines in the sun—
Pavel shouts, I am so fucking beautiful I cannot stand it!
Two boys still holding tomato sandwiches
hop in the trolley’s light, soldiers aim at their faces. Their ears.
I can’t find my wife, where is my pregnant wife?
I, a body, adult male, awaits to
explode like a hand grenade.
It has begun: I see the blue canary of my country
pick breadcrumbs from each citizen’s eyes—
pick breadcrumbs from my neighbors’ hair—
the snow leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should—
to have a country, so important—
to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should—
The blue canary of my country
runs into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones—
The blue canary of my country
watches their legs as they run and fall.
Arrival
You arrive at noon, little daughter, weighing only six pounds. Sonya sets you atop the piano and plays a lullaby no one hears. In the nursery, quiet hisses like a match dropped in water.
Lullaby
Little daughter
rainwater
snow and branches protect you
whitewashed walls
and neighbors’ hands all
Child of my Aprils
little earth of
six pounds
my white hair
keeps your sleep lit
Question
What is a child?
A quiet between two bombardments.
While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses
She scrubs me until I spit
soapy water.
Pig, she smiles.
A man should smell better than his country—
such is the silence
of a woman who speaks against silence, knowing
silence moves us to speak.
She throws my shoes
and glasses in the air,
I am of deaf people
and I have
no country but a bathtub and an infant and a marriage bed!
Soaping together
is sacred to us.
Washing each other’s shoulders.
You can fuck
anyone—but with whom can you sit
in water?
A Cigarette
Watch—
Vasenka citizens do not know they are evidence of happiness.
In a time of war,
each is a ripped-out document of laughter.
Watch, God—
deaf have something to tell
that not even they can hear.
Climb a roof in Central Square of this bombarded city, you will see—
one neighbor thieves a cigarette,
another gives a dog
a pint of sunlit beer.
You will find me, God,
like a dumb pigeon’s beak, I am
pecking
every which way at astonishment.
A Dog Sniffs
Morning.
In a bombed-out street, wind moves the lips of a politician on a poster. Inside, the child Sonya named Anushka suckles. Not sleeping, Alfonso touches his wife’s nipple, pulls to his lips a pearl of milk.
Evening.
As Alfonso steps onto Tedna Street in search of bread, the wind brittles his body. Four jeeps pull onto the curb: Sonya is stolen into a jeep as Anushka cries, left behind as the convoy rattles away. The neighbors peek from behind curtains. Silence like a dog sniffs the windowpanes between us.
What We Cannot Hear
They shove Sonya into the army jeep
one morning, one morning, one morning in May, one dime-bright morning—
they shove her
and she zigzags and turns and trips in silence
which is a soul’s noise.
Sonya, who once said, On the day of my arrest I will be playing piano.
We watch four men
shove her—
and we think we see hundreds of old pianos forming a bridge
from Arlemovsk to Tedna Street, and she
waits at each piano—
and what remains of her is
a puppet
that speaks with its fingers,
what remains of a puppet is this woman, what remains
of her (they took you, Sonya)—the voice we cannot hear—is the clearest voice.
Central Square
The arrested are made to walk with their arms raised up. As if they are about to leave the earth and are trying out the wind.
For an apple a peek, soldiers display Sonya, naked, under a TROOPS ARE FIGHTING FOR YOUR FREEDOM poster. Snow swirls in her nostrils. Soldiers circle her eyes with a red pencil. The young soldier aims in the red circle. Spits. Another aims. Spits. The town watches. Around her neck a sign: I RESISTED ARREST.
Sonya looks straight ahead, to where the soldiers are lined up. Suddenly, out of this silence comes her voice, Ready! The soldiers raise their rifles on her command.
A Widower
Alfonso Barabinski stands in Central Square
without a shirt,
rakes up snow and throws it on
marching troops.
His mouth
drives the first syllable of his wife’s name into walls—
He, on foot, a good mile and a half of wind,
sets off for the beach, on cobblestone streets, and stops every woman he meets—
Alfonso Barabinski, vodka flask in
his pocket, bites a hole in an apple and in that hole
he pours a shot of vodka—
and he drinks to our health—
a toast to his wife shot in the center of town where her body
lies down.
Alfonso Barabinski, a child in his arms, spray-paints on the sea wall:
PEOPLE LIVE HERE—
like an illiterate
signing a document
he does not understand.
For His Wife
I am your boy
drowning in this country, who doesn’t know
the word for drowning
and yells
I am diving for the last time!
I, This Body
I, this body into which the hand of God plunges,
empty-chested, stand.
At the funeral—
Momma Galya and her puppeteers rise to shake my hand.
I fold our child in a green handkerchief,
brief gift.
You left, my door-slamming wife; and I,
a fool, live.
But the voice I don’t hear when I speak to myself is the clearest voice:
when my wife washed my hair, when I kissed
between her toes—
in the empty streets of our district, a bit of wind
called for life.
Wife taken, child
not three days out of the womb, in my arms, our apartment
empty, on the floor
the dirty snow from her boots.
Her Dresses
Her bright dresses
with delicate zippers.
Her ironed
socks.
I stand by
the mirror.
Trying on my wife’s red socks.
Elegy
Six words,
Lord:
please ease
of song
my tongue.
Above Blue Tin Roofs, Deafness
Our boys want a public killing in the sunlit piazza.
They drag a drunk soldier, around his neck a sign:
I ARRESTED THE WOMEN OF VASENKA.
The boys have no idea how to kill a man.
Alfonso signs, I will kill him for a box of oranges.
The boys pay a box of oranges.
He cracks a raw egg in a cup,
smells a trickle of oranges in the snow,
and he tosses the egg down his throat like a vodka shot.
He is washing his hands, he is putting on red
socks, he is putting his tongue where his tooth has been.
The girls spit in the soldier’s mouth.
A pigeon settles on a stop sign, making it sway.
An idiot boy
whispers, Long Live Deafness! and spits at the soldier.
In the center of the piazza
a soldier on his knees begs as townspeople shake their heads, and point at their ears.
Deafness is suspended above blue tin roofs
and copper eaves; deafness
feeds on birches, light posts, hospital roofs, bells;
deafness rests in our men’s chests.
Our girls sign, Start.
Our boys, wet and freckled, cross themselves.
Tomorrow we will be exposed like the thin ribs of dogs
but tonight
we don’t care enough to lie:
Alfonso jumps on the soldier, embraces him, cuts him to the lung.
The soldier flies about the sidewalk.
The town watches the loud animal bones
in their faces and smells the earth.
It is the girls who steal the oranges
and hide them in their shirts.
A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck
Alfonso stumbles from the corpse of the soldier. The townspeople are cheering, elated, pounding him on the back. Those who climbed the trees to watch applaud from the branches. Momma Galya shouts about pigs, pigs clean as men.
At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?
In the Bright Sleeve of the Sky
Is that you, little soul?
Sometimes at night I
light a lamp so as not
to see.
I tiptoe,
Anushka
drowsing
in my palms:
on my balding head, her bonnet.
To Live
To live is to love, the great book commands.
But love is not enough—
the heart needs a little foolishness!
For our child I fold the newspaper, make a hat
and pretend to Sonya that I am the greatest poet
and she pretends to be alive—
my Sonya, her stories and her eloquent legs,
her legs and stories that open other stories.
(Stop talking while we are kissing!)
I see myself—a yellow raincoat,
a sandwich, a piece of tomato between my teeth,
I hoist our infant Anushka to the sky—
(Old fool, my wife might have laughed)
I am singing as she pisses
on my forehead and my shoulders!
The Townspeople Watch Them Take Alfonso
Now each of us is
a witness stand:
Vasenka watches us watch four soldiers throw Alfonso Barabinski on the sidewalk.
We let them take him, all of us cowards.
What we don’t say
we carry in our suitcases, coat pockets, our nostrils.
Across the street they wash him with firehoses. First he screams,
then he stops.
So much sunlight—
a t-shirt falls off a clothesline and an old man stops, picks it up, presses it to his face.
Neighbors jostle to watch him thrown on the sidewalk like a vaudeville act: Ta Da.
In so much sunlight—
each of us
is a witness stand:
They take Alfonso
and no one stands up. Our silence stands up for us.
Away
A soldier marches away from us, carrying Sonya and Alfonso’s orphan child. In Central Square, Alfonso hangs from a rope. Urine darkens his trousers.
The puppet of his hand dances.
Eulogy
You must speak not only of great devastation—
we heard that not from a philosopher
but from our neighbor, Alfonso—
his eyes closed, he climbed other people’s porches and recited
to his child our National Anthem:
You must speak not only of great devastation—
when his child cried, he
made her a newspaper hat and squeezed his silence
like two pleats of an accordion:
We must speak not only of great devastation—
and he played that accordion out of tune in a country
where the only musical instrument is the door.
Question
What is a man?
A quiet between two bombardments.
Such Is the Story Made of Stubbornness and a Little Air
Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air—
a story signed by those who danced wordless before God.
Who whirled and leapt. Giving voice to consonants that rise
with no protection but each other’s ears.
We are on our bellies in this quiet, Lord.
Let us wash our faces in the wind and forget the strict shapes of affection.
Let the pregnant woman hold something of clay in her hand.
She believes in God, yes, but also in the mothers
of her country who take off their shoes
and walk. Their footsteps erase our syntax.
Let her man kneel on the roof, clearing his throat
(for the secret of patience is his wife’s patience).
He who
loves roofs, tonight and tonight, making love to her and to her forgetting, let them borrow the light from the blind.
There will be evidence, there will be evidence.
While helicopters bomb the streets, whatever they will open, will open.
What is silence? Something of the sky in us.
ACT TWO
The Townspeople Tell the Story of Momma Galya
Townspeople Speak of Galya on Her Green Bicycle
Momma Galya Armolinskaya, 53, is having more sex than any of us.
When she walks across the balcony
a soldier oh stands up,
another stands,
then the whole battalion.
We try not to look at her breasts—
they are everywhere,
nipples like bullets.
Wanting to arrest her,
the soldiers
visit her theater—and come back to her theater every night.
By day, Galya aims empty milk bottles at security checkpoints:
on a green bicycle
she flies over the country like
a tardy milkman,
a rim of ice on her bottle caps.
Galya Armolinskaya, the luckiest woman in our nation!
Your iron bicycle tearing with bright
whiskey anthems
through an advancing rank of soldiers into
daylight. You pedal barefoot wearing just
shorts.
And let the law go whistle.
When Momma Galya First Protested
She sucks at a cigarette butt and yells
to a soldier,
Go home! You haven’t kissed your wife since Noah was a sailor!
Madame Momma Galya Armolinskaya, what would we give to ride away from our
funerals
beside you, in a yellow taxi,
two windows open,
leaving loaves of bread
in the mailboxes
of the arrested.