Three Poems

Jehanne Dubrow

FRAGMENT FROM A NONEXISTENT YIDDISH POET, #19

Forewarned, we spent the night
crouched in a field of corn,
         (we have become guilty)
uneasy among the ears,
not knowing day would bring
worse noises than the green
         (we have caused wickedness)
stalks swaying in the dark
                    (we have sinned willfully)
like one, one body moved
as if thinking one thought.

The wind threshed through the field,
a scythe, invisible
except to ghosts and those
                           (we have rebelled, provoked)
not long from death, the ones
                    (we've acted wantonly)
already dried to husks.
The dirt crunched underfoot.
And moonlight showed the corn
         (you've let us go astray)
silk glinting like blond hair.

BYSTANDER

         Being afraid of these murderers, I replied,
         I cannot help you with anything, and I passed them by.
                  —Karol Bardón, witness to the Jedwabne pogrom

It keeps me up at night.
The neighbor, how he wept,
Save me, Mister Bardon,
blood seeping from his skin
so thick it must be dreamt

not real, so red that light
must hemorrhage. The white
gaze of my dreams dries brown
to keep me up—

for years, no sleep despite
the need to just forget.
My conscience is a pin
that pricks the eye open
to never shut. The sight
still keeps me up.

BARN BURNING

shove everybody in
and bar the doors
and pour the kerosene

a crime that goes unseen
can be ignored
shove everybody in

then drench them with their sins
no sin to pour
keep pouring kerosene

flame-christening the skins
those thieves those whores
shoving the wretches in

think how the fire screens
our eyes         it's war
that pours the kerosene

they'll blaze to make us clean
as Christ our Lord
shove all the fuckers in
and spark the kerosene

                   amen.

Jehanne Dubrow

Jehanne Dubrow was born in Italy and grew up in Yugoslavia, Zaire, Poland, Belgium, Austria, and the United States. She is currently completing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Hudson Review, Tikkun, The New England Review, and Poetry Northwest. A chapbook, The Promised Bride, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2007.

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