A Country of Strangers: New Poems
Order to Dispersefor the students
Tonight my children are facing live ammunition.
One holds a rock, one brought a Bible, one hides a phone.
The fires of the provocateurs burn so brightly.
The police put duct tape over their badges.
The soldiers are hooded; they wear no insignia.
Last night they had rubber bullets, tonight hollow-point.
In the smoke you see the outlines of a bank, a cathedral,
absent as the profiles of Presidents on coins.
A voice advances, a voice retreats, someone aims.
Have you ever died in a dream? What happened then?
Tell me what happened! There is only one life.
How long will I hold mine like water in cupped hands?
The Detentions
In death too there are great cities, streets of padlocked binderies under rain that tastes of piss, cathedrals with bricked-in windows, garages lit by droplights, tenements with narrow stairs covered by linoleum treads worn smooth as the ball of a thumb. Catch your breath on any landing: a heart or a name will be scratched into the wall.
Here too is the dim room where lovers test each other, as you push against the slats of a fence, word after word, caress after caress. Here too you hear cars whoosh in the distance, crazily absent, and lights cross the ceiling, as if a child flung a handful of rice. A scrap of passing music calls you, more intimate than a voice.
Here too a red glare pulses and someone shouts. Again you look down from a great height. Is the man in cuffs drunk? Why is he staggering? Again you have to decide: do I yell out the window and show where I live? Do I take a video on my cell? Where would I send it? Do I run down those endless flights, into the street, waving my hands and commanding no? Would I at least be able to memorize the license plate? Would it be blank?
Even at the end of death. Prepare yourself. Even where there is no I. No judgment, no reward.
Only the long street, the gray rain, the boarded shops, a few passersby, their eyes kept down, the lamps shining inward.
In the City of Statues
When we were old and knew
we would never see Canaan
we woke in the same breath
dressed shivering, gulped instant,
and trudged to the rally point
with our Magic Marker pasteboard
to chant ourselves speechless
though we did not believe the slogans
and the crowd was all strangers—
(once we saw a child who looked
like you forty years ago and once
young lovers with our own grievance
and resolve)—facing us, batons,
gas canisters, hoses, stun guns,
grenades, and the strange machine
that can decipher the human face.
In the Winter of Painted Swastikas
The demonstration is winding down,
the sound system has been dismantled
and stashed in numbered boxes,
students draped in frayed banners
are flirting or commiserating,
there’s still a sense of safety
lingering though the streets
home are icy, dark, and watched,
and if two women hold hands
a helmet on a rooftop will shout
girls coming from the march.
Copyright © 2022 by D. Nurkse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.