LOOKING UP MY OWN LAST NAME ON THE SHOAH VICTIMS DATABASE

​

Alive, I know eleven Liberzons. Here,

one hundred and ninety two.

 

My christian friend Addie was

visiting Israel and wanted to go

to Yad VaShem, the world's largest

holocaust museum. I was farther ahead

of her, so when I finished the main exhibits early,

 

I decided to use my extra time to indulge

a curiosity. I do not think about the holocaust much;

it ended 45 years before I was born. It is past.

I've never known myself to be upset by it.

 

I begin. Lea. Louis. Chana. I decide I will read each name

aloud, quietly, one by one. Ten names in,

I find my baby brother's name. I read it aloud.

I find my father's name. I read it aloud.

 

Yisrael. Yitzchak. Dvora. I read my uncle's name.

My grandfather's name. My great grandfather's name.

Piotr. Maya. Daniel. I read the names

of the woman who lived down the hall from me

freshman year, and her older brother the lawyer,

and the boy who used to sell them both drugs.

Hadasa. Yosef. Genya. I read the name

of the girl whose poem I heard and hated

in a hotel hallway in Philadelphia. And now

the name of a woman whom I had sex with

one drunken New Year's eve and regretted. And now

the woman with whom I first made love.

 

Anna. Kayla. Lev. I don't remember at what point

I start crying, just that it doesn't stop me. I read every name

I've even once thought of giving to children

of my own. What I would call a son, A daughter.

I read all the names my father thought of

giving my younger brother before he settled

on Jacob. Yakov. Yosef. Avraham. Eliezer.

 

Addie has finished touring. She sits next to me,

silent. I want her to say something to pull me

from this book of victims and the graveyards it makes

in me, but she says nothing. Her name is nowhere in there.

​​

​

HERE

after Aracelis Girmay

​

Because it is a workshop,

and a title is just a title even if it’s not yours

because the rest of the poem is.

Say, look, this is the act of unraveling,

here is the start of crying without weeping,

of people asking if you’re okay

and not knowing the answer, here is

the aggravated cock

of your brother’s eyebrow

at the pervasiveness of lists

in Patrick Rosal’s workshops, here is

you trying to copy the poem and

thinking more about divorce than childhood

because childhood is never a poem,

always a fever dream, and poems

are about people and you’ve

spent too much time alone,

here is the yawning,

the stale bagel morning,

here is the day that anticipates the

storm and pushes you to lose

focus, here is the page that reminds

what you think you should be writing:

your mother, your father, alone,

the occasional guilt

at how happy you were

that they left each other.

Here is your mother alone,

crying herself into and out of work

Here is your father alone,

apologetic as he is volatile,

trying to impress you

with his interim apartment which

is always too warm and the bed

which is always too soft,

and he says its better

than your other bed

and you won’t argue Here

is your commute,

back and forth by bicycle,

​​

it’s only a half mile but you’ve

gotten lost more times than you’d

like, coming back home and your baked macaroni

and cheese with bacon bits TV dinner, here is

your linguini alfredo with bell peppers

TV dinner, here is a TV dinner you spent

four and a half minutes ignoring as it boiled

don’t stop watching TV to notice what it is

you’re eating it is likely nothing new.

Here is couscous and some chicken,

here is couscous and some beef,

here is couscous and some %sh and

be nice because he likes couscous

and this is actual cooking and

don’t make him angry Here

is the first book of poetry,

with the rabbit in its hoodie

on the cover, and being so excited

and wanting to show it

to your dad, and here is

counting the number of happy poems

like your life depended on it

and throwing it away an hour later

and not understanding why, here is

listening to John Mayer and dad

telling you the music is too extreme and

what might be good to show him Here

is going back to mom’s and hearing her

apologize for bringing you late to school yesterday

morning because she just sort-of got lost

making coffee, and here is her cry that night

and going up and hugging her like she did you

and hoping its enough Here is going

to the Neutral Zone for breakdancing classes

and learning to hold your whole body in the air

with your hands, finding the balance where

you can lift anything if you hold your bones right,

and here is going to the Genyokan with Dad

for aikido, where you can pull someone

off the ground with your hands,

finding the balance where you can move anyone

anywhere if you just hold their bones right

And you start to wonder if you have enough hands

for so many bones.