Watch — …
Ilya Kaminsky
If I speak for the dead, I must leave …
Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air, …
I kissed a woman …
It is December 8 and my brother Tony was killed by the soldiers. December 8 and the police are reopening the Southern Trolleyways. December 8 when my wife lifts Tony’s body from the ground, his arm tied over her shoulder—her face is damp, her hair dirty. And the soldiers unveil the damn Trolleyways, and I stand feeling (a quick march of bumps across my back and thighs) nothing. …
I remember Tony arguing in front of his mirrors, the soldiers …
Love cities, this is what my brother taught me …
Each man has a quiet that revolves …
Motionless forgetful music of women and men …
Yet I am. I exists. I has …
Running down Vasenka street my clothes in a pillowcase …
Don’t forget this: Men who live in this time remember the price of each bottle of vodka. Sunlight on the canal outside the train-station. With the neighbor’s ladder, my brother Tony “Mosquito” and I climb the poplar in the public garden with one and a half bottles of vodka and we drink there all night. Sunlight on a young girl’s face, asleep on the church steps. Tony recites poems, forgets I cannot hear. I watch the sunlight in the rearview mirror of trolleys as they pass. …
“You must speak not only of great devastation …
I watch loud animal bones in their faces & I can smell the earth. …
Through Vasenka: a herd of boys runs. With their icy hands they haul a policeman and for an apple a look they display the man on the asphalt. Snow falls in his nostrils. I watch him. They circle his eyes with a red pencil. They teach his neighbors to spit in two red holes. I watch the snowflakes melt in their hair. The neighbor aims in the red circle, spits. I stand on a park bench and chew snow. Boys walk west of Tedna, carrying snowflakes in their hair. A neighbor aims in the hole, spits. Walking by night with their arms lifted up from their bodies. As if they were about to leave the earth. And were trying out the wind. …
Dr. Alfonso Barabinsky wants …
I look at you, Alfonso …
I am not a poet, Sonya I inspect …
—but if I do …
What is a man? …
I cover the eyes of Gena, 7, and Anushka, 2, …
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we …