Momma Galya Armolinskaya,
by the avenue’s wet walls, yells:
Deafness isn’t an illness! It’s a sexual position!
A young soldier patrolling a curfew
whispers,
Galya Armolinskaya, yes, Galya Armolinskaya
whipped a Lieutenant with the leash of his own patrol dog
and there were thirty-two persons watching
(for a baker
insisted
on bringing his sons).
On a night like this God’s got an eye on her
but she isn’t a sparrow.
In a time of war
she teaches us how to open the door
and walk
through
which is the true curriculum of schools.
A Bundle of Laundry
In Central Square, an army checkpoint. Above the checkpoint, Alfonso’s body still hangs from a rope like a puppet of wind. Inside the backroom of the checkpoint, the infant Anushka cries.
In front of the checkpoint, two of Momma Galya’s puppeteers climb a park bench and start kissing, hands full of each other’s hair. The soldiers are cheering them on and taking bets on how long they will last. The girls smile. Stop talking while we are kissing!
Unseen, Momma Galya exits the checkpoint with a bundle of laundry stolen from the Sergeant’s clothesline, Anushka hidden in the linens. Snow pours out of the sun.
What Are Days
Like middle-aged men,
the days of May
walk to prisons.
Like young men they walk to prisons,
overcoats
thrown over their pajamas.
Galya Whispers, as Anushka Nuzzles
In our avenues, election posters show the various hairstyles
of a famous dictator—
and I, at 53
having given up thought of a child, I—(turning to my neighbors and shouting, Come here!
Come here!
Marvelous cretins!
She just pooped on the park bench, marvelous cretins!
Parenthood
costs us a little dignity)
—thank God.
Wind sweeps bread from market stalls, shopkeepers spill insults
and the wind already has a bike between its legs—
but when, with a laundry basket out in the streets, I walk,
the wind is helpless
with desire to touch these tiny bonnets and socks.
Galya’s Puppeteers
Behind the curtains of the theater, a puppeteer glides her lips over the soldier Ivanoff’s penis. He puts one hand on her hair and pulls her to him. She moves the hand away, still kissing him. When his hand is in her hair again, she stops, raises her eyes to him and signs, Be good. He takes another swig from his vodka. She takes him in her mouth and closes her eyes. Slides, faster and faster.
Beautiful are the women of Vasenka, beautiful. When she licks the palm of his hand, he laughs. When finally he passes out, she strangles him with a puppet-string. As the soldiers lined up downstairs raise a toast to Momma Galya, they don’t see the puppeteers drag the body out back.
Beautiful are the women of Vasenka, beautiful.
Hello, love. The door opens and she motions another soldier to come in.
In Bombardment, Galya
In the twenty-seventh day of aerial bombardment, I
have nothing except my body, and the walls of this empty apartment flap and flap like a lung.
How to say I only want some quiet; I, a deaf woman, want some quiet, I want some quiet;
I, in the middle of
the nursery where earth asks of me, earth asks of me
too much, I
(before I give up my hiccupping heart and sleep) count
our strength—a woman and a child.
This body I testify from is a binoculars through which you watch, God—
a child clutches a chair,
while the soldiers (their faces are molded from inside by words) arrest all my people, I
run and the flag is the towel the wind dries its hands on.
While they tear off the doors to my empty
apartment—I am in another apartment smiling as the child clutches a chair,
wobbles
toward you and me, God.
I clap and cheer
her first steps,
her first steps, exposed like everybody.
The Little Bundles
While the days of June like middle-aged men
walk to prisons
I cut Anushka’s hair:
on her shoulder
on her shoulder
the little bundles pile up.
•
I am mortal—
I nap.
•
Anushka, your pajamas—
they are the final meanings of my life.
To get you into your pajamas,
Anushka!
So much to live for.
•
To bed, Anushka!
I am not deaf
I simply told the world
to shut off its crazy music for a while.
Galya’s Toast
To your voice, a mysterious virtue,
to the twenty-six bones of one foot, the four dimensions of breathing,
to pine, redwood, sword fern, peppermint,
to hyacinth and bluebell lily,
to the train conductor’s donkey on a rope,
to the smell of lemons, a boy pissing splendidly against the trees.
Bless each thing on earth until it sickens,
until each ungovernable heart admits: I confused myself
and yet I loved—and what I loved
I forgot, what I forgot brought glory to my travels,
to you I traveled as close as I dared, Lord.
Theater Nights
On the stage of Galya’s theater, a woman bends to cover her coy knees, showing the audience of soldiers the burlesque of her cleavage.
Around her, the stage darkens. The puppeteers drag another strangled soldier into an alleyway.
In the center of the stage Momma Galya strikes a match.
And While Puppeteers Are Arrested
silence?
it is a stick I beat you with, I beat you with a stick, voice, beat you
until you speak, until you
speak right.
Soldiers Don’t Like Looking Foolish
Morning. Someone scribbles the names of the arrested and nails the list to the wall. Some names are illegible, just a squiggle, a mustache.
We see Galya’s finger tremble down the list.
After detaining every woman on Tedna Street for what Galya’s girls did to soldier Ivanoff, the army begins to bomb a new store each morning for what Galya’s girls did to soldier Petrovich, for what Galya’s girls did to soldier Debenko.
The streets empty.
A vegetable kiosk explodes, a tomato flies toward us and falls apart in the wind.
Search Patrols
I cover the eyes of Gena, 7, and Yasha, 9,
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 a 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.
Lullaby
I look at you, Anushka,
and say
to the late
caterpillars
goodmorning, Senators!
worthy
of our weapons!
Firing Squad
On balconies, sunlight. On poplars, sunlight, on our lips.
Today no one is shooting.
A girl cuts her hair with imaginary scissors—
the scissors in sunlight, her hair in sunlight.
Another girl nicks a pair of shoes from a sleeping soldier, skewered with light.
As soldiers wake and gape at us gaping at them,
what do they see?
Tonight they shot fifty women on Lerna Street.
I sit down to write and tell you what I know:
a child learns the world by putting it in her mouth,
a girl becomes a woman and a woman, earth.
Body, they blame you for all things and they
seek in the body what does not live in the body.
Question
What is a woman?
A quiet between two bombardments.
Yet, I Am
Yet, I am. I exists. I has
a body.
When Anushka
takes my finger
in her mouth, she
bites.
How do we live on earth, child?
If I could hear
you, what would you say?
Your answer!
On earth we can do
—can’t we?—
what we want.
The Trial
Wearing a child like a broken arm, Galya sidles through Central Square. Of the buildings bombed on Tedna Street, only door frames are left standing. Doors and puppets dangling from their handles, a puppet for every shot citizen.
From the sidewalks, neighbors watch two women step in front of Galya. My sister was arrested because of your revolution, one spits in her face. Another takes her by the hair, I will open your skull and scramble your eggs! They grab Anushka, then drag Galya behind the bakery.
The market fills with shopkeepers yawning and unpacking their wares. The stallkeepers sweep. Galya stumbles out from the alley, clutching first one neighbor, then another. She runs after the woman holding Anushka. They push her away with their brooms.
She shouts.
They point to their ears.
Gracefully, our people shut their windows.
Pursued by the Men of Vasenka
We see her zigzag between us in the street—
her face slashed
like a zipper stuck in her coat—
My dear neighbors! she yells,
My dear neighbors! Marvelous cretins!
She yells at us like that.
Dig a good hole!
Lay me nostrils up
and shovel in my mouth the decent black earth.
Anonymous
And as for Momma Galya’s coffin, it got chocked
in the stairwell and we had to carry it upside down.
There were too many bodies and
not enough people—
too many ears and no one attached to them.
In this time
each person does something for our country.
Some die.
Others give speeches.
Too many people and not enough hands
to wash Momma Galya’s body and trim her fingernails—
the last
courtesy
shown in our land.
Today
I have to screw on the expression of a person
though I am at most an animal
and the animal I am spirals
from the funeral to his kitchen, shouts: I have come, God, I have come running to you—
in snow-drifted streets, I stand like a flagpole
without a flag.
And Yet, on Some Nights
Our country has surrendered.
Years later, some will say none of this happened; the shops were open, we were happy and went to see puppet shows in the park.
And yet, on some nights, townspeople dim the lights and teach their children to sign. Our country is the stage: when patrols march, we sit on our hands. Don’t be afraid, a child signs to a tree, a door.
When patrols march, the avenues empty. Air empties, but for the squeaks of strings and the tap tap of wooden fists against the walls.
We are sitting in the audience, still. Silence, like the bullet that’s missed us, spins—
In a Time of Peace
Inhabitant of earth for fortysomething years
I once found myself in a peaceful country. I watch neighbors open
their phones to watch
a cop demanding a man’s driver’s license. When the man reaches for his wallet, the cop
shoots. Into the car window. Shoots.
It is a peaceful country.
We pocket our phones and go.
To the dentist,
to pick up the kids from school,
to buy shampoo
and basil.
Ours is a country in which a boy shot by police lies on the pavement
for hours.
We see in his open mouth
the nakedness
of the whole nation.
We watch. Watch
others watch.
The body of a boy lies on the pavement exactly like the body of a boy—
It is a peaceful country.
And it clips our citizens’ bodies
effortlessly, the way the President’s wife trims her toenails.
All of us
still have to do the hard work of dentist appointments,
of remembering to make
a summer salad: basil, tomatoes, it is a joy, tomatoes, add a little salt.
This is a time of peace.
I do not hear gunshots,
but watch birds splash over the backyards of the suburbs. How bright is the sky
as the avenue spins on its axis.
How bright is the sky (forgive me) how bright.
Notes
ON SIGNS: In Vasenka, the townspeople invented their own sign language. Some of the signs derived from various traditions (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, American Sign Language, etc.). Other signs might have been made up by citizens, as they tried to create a language not known to authorities.
ON SILENCE: The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing.
Acknowledgments
“We Lived Happily during the War” is for Eleanor Wilner.
“Gunshot” is for Jericho Brown.
“Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins” is for Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky.
“That Map of Bone and Opened Valves” is for Brian Turner.
“Four a.m. Bombardment” is for Denis Johnson.
“A Cigarette” is for Sherhiy Zhadan.
“Firing Squad” is for Garth Greenwell.
“In a Time of Peace” is for Carolyn Forché and Patricia Smith.
All love poems are for Katie Farris.
I am grateful to the editors of the following journals, where some of these poems have appeared, often in different forms: Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, The Café Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Cork Literary Review, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Image, The Kenyon Review, Lana Turner, The Massachusetts Review, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, A Public Space, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Wales, Runes, Seneca Review, The Shop (Ireland), Spillway, Wolf, and World Literature Today.
I am also grateful to the editors of the following anthologies where some of these poems have appeared: The Best American Poetry (Scribner, 2018), American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time (Graywolf, 2018), Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now (Knopf, 2017), Poems for Political Disaster (Boston Review, 2017), The Mighty Stream: Poems in Celebration of Martin Luther King (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), Liberation: New Works on Freedom from Internationally Renowned Poets (Beacon Press, 2015), The Wolf Anthology (Wolf, 2012), Sunken Garden Poetry: 1992-2011 (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), Pushcart Prize Anthology (
Pushcart Press, 2012), I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights (Lost Horse Press, 2010), New Poets of the American West (Many Voices Press, 2010), Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century (White Pine Press, 2010), 13 Younger Contemporary American Poets (Proem Press, 2009), From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems That Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea Books, 2009), and the Poem-a-Day Series of the Academy of American Poets.
I am grateful to the following people for helping me to become a better person and writer: Kaveh Akbar, Sandra Alcosser, Hari Alluri, Catherine Barnett, Polina Barskova, Calvin Bedient, Sherwin Bitsui, Malachi Black, Jericho Brown, James Byrne, Ali Calderon, Victoria Chang, Adam Davis, Kwame Dawes, Chard DeNiord, Ming Di, Blas Falconer, Carolyn Forché, Katie Ford, Jeff Friedman, Carol Frost, Rachel Galvin, Forrest Gander, David Gewanter, Garth Greenwell, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Matthew Hollis, J. Hope Stein, Lizz Huerta, Ishion Hutchinson, Susan Kelly DeWitt, David Keplinger, Kerry Keys, Suji Kwock Kim, Steve Kowitt, Li-Young Lee, Dana Levin, Jeffrey Levine, James Longenbach, Thomas Lux, Ruth Madievsky, Nikola Madzirov, Dora Malech, David Tomas Martinez, David Matlin, Philip Metres, Malena Mörling, Valzhyna Mort, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Sandeep Parmar, Charles Pratt, Mary Rakow, Tomaz Salamun, Jim Schley, Don Share, Charles Simic, Peter Streckfus, Sam Taylor, Susan Terris, Katherine Towler, Brian Turner, Jean Valentine, Alissa Vales, Adam Veal, G. C. Waldrep, Michael Waters, Karry Wayson, Eleanor Wilner, Christian Wiman, Adam Zagajewski, and Matthew Zapruder.
Thanks also to Jennifer Whitten and Gail Schneider for the gift of their artwork.
Thanks to the Guggenheim Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Poetry Foundation, Whiting Foundation, MacDowell, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Faber and Faber, and Tupelo Press for their support.
Deepest gratitude to Graywolf Press and especially to Jeff Shotts for his faith in this book.