by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)
Deep within my marrow
flows my DNA, your blood,
your ambitions, your regrets,
your aches, your pains, your nightmares.
Deep within my memory
I call up your shtetl, its fields,
thatched roofs, unnamed streets.
Bold numbers nailed to door jambs,
revealing the town plan. Deep within
this hiccup murmurs your Galician dialect
of southeastern Poland, the bleats
of goats, the shofar during High Holy Days.
Deep within the walls of the stucco homes
childbirth cries. Deep within
the burrows of the streets resounds the beat
of hobnailed boots and rapid gunfire.
You weren’t there during the invasions.
You weren’t there for mobile killing squads.
You weren’t there during deportations.
But you experienced it all the same,
just as I did.
Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.
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