recent work
Czyste Hospital 1942
God’s awful machine. In a Warsaw hospital, Apfelbaum, cardiologist,
prods patient age 16 heart smaller than the fist of the deceased
to sit-up, push-up. Bedsore as bashert. Cathartic
calisthenics, for as patient age 16 complies, it’s eye-up
head-thump dead. The end. Their running which always resulted
in a fall. In dying she cracks her skull on the iron bed,
and the skin of the starved is so paper-thin that her forehead tears.
Is the saint the light, or the one who sees it? The body without organs
is not God, non omnis moriar, I shall not wholly die.
The starving ache as sharply when the hunger has meaning.
Patient age 16 like a shot down pigeon hears the doctor’s reason
and loses it in the ghetto of her body, the cracked mouth,
the spreading edema, the lights that move across her vision
like a veil. The body without organs is disorganized.
The atrophied liver. Apfelbaum’s gloved hand
with her heart at its center. He cannot stop her death,
so he records it. He sees with swollen eyes, like
Jeremiah. He cannot feed his patient age 16,
the small science of her body cannot be consulted,
beseeched, praised, anointed, railed against,
appealed to for meaning like a saint
when the child she never bore asks who is to blame.
There were notices posted as the trains for Treblinka arrived
that every woman, man or child, a willing passenger,
received upon departure three kilograms of bread
with marmalade. In waves, they came.
Bread can be believed. Even when they’ve lied.
God’s awful machine. In a Warsaw hospital, Apfelbaum, cardiologist,
prods patient age 16 heart smaller than the fist of the deceased
to sit-up, push-up. Bedsore as bashert. Cathartic
calisthenics, for as patient age 16 complies, it’s eye-up
head-thump dead. The end. Their running which always resulted
in a fall. In dying she cracks her skull on the iron bed,
and the skin of the starved is so paper-thin that her forehead tears.
Is the saint the light, or the one who sees it? The body without organs
is not God, non omnis moriar, I shall not wholly die.
The starving ache as sharply when the hunger has meaning.
Patient age 16 like a shot down pigeon hears the doctor’s reason
and loses it in the ghetto of her body, the cracked mouth,
the spreading edema, the lights that move across her vision
like a veil. The body without organs is disorganized.
The atrophied liver. Apfelbaum’s gloved hand
with her heart at its center. He cannot stop her death,
so he records it. He sees with swollen eyes, like
Jeremiah. He cannot feed his patient age 16,
the small science of her body cannot be consulted,
beseeched, praised, anointed, railed against,
appealed to for meaning like a saint
when the child she never bore asks who is to blame.
There were notices posted as the trains for Treblinka arrived
that every woman, man or child, a willing passenger,
received upon departure three kilograms of bread
with marmalade. In waves, they came.
Bread can be believed. Even when they’ve lied.