Text
My mother was a Nazi child before she came
to America(n ways), the long wearing off
of the old country: face slaps and rules
for children. All she had to do was look
at me, though she did slap first, then ask.
We were only to be seen, and when we spoke,
we used that old tongue Kann ich mich entschuldigen?
to be excused from the table. Excuses,
excuses, I made my share. Up the stairs
from the dark scary cellar without whatever
I was sent to get. I forgot. Then her singsong
voice mocking me, I forgahttt. There was no back
talk. In her perfectionism, my failure.
Wrong, wrong. Like a cicada underground,
festering decades, spiny, quick as a whip,
at small irritations, larger wounds: I snap.
I was harmed—was she looking then,
before time revealed the truth. With the pain,
release; with release, relief, and unraveling.
I stuffed and stuffed all the words
I couldn’t say, forbidden, under a false front:
who me? Sunny summer child. A little slow
they thought. But no. Not slow,
dumb from the gnarled hands that broke
something in me. Murder, murder, a sky
full of crows. Black feathers, black danger.
A thousand cuts. Anger, a commodity, black
oil pumps in my Germanic heart.