Vox Humana Literary Journal

by Steve Pelcman

THE THINGS LITTLE CHILDREN CAN DO
(Poland 1939)

For a six-year-old to understand death, calmly, Did not surprise her older sister, Who, shook her head And softly croaked out To her mother and younger brother that German soldiers were approaching again.

The younger girl whispered
For them to hide in the cellar,
Behind the sacks of potatoes
In cold storage
And to not open the door
No matter what.

She closed the front door behind her
And turned towards
The naked body on the opposite lawn
Appearing as a white lump of dead grass
Gathered and left in the rain.
It was not a surprise
For everyone knew he was sick, mad
And no loss to Germans on the hunt,
And it was expected he would share death With his neighbors that way.

She almost hummed along
As she heard the boots approaching,
Noticed the sunlight on them
And did not move
Not even when the recoil
Of a bullet leaving a gun
Found its way into the
Chest of the dead neighbor
Forcing his shoulders to tremble
The way her lips did as she clamoured,
“No Jews here”, and raised her skinny right arm quickly, As her skirt rose above her knees, And then she smiled with wide eyes and mouth As if she could be theirs.

BELONGING

The oak tree had been there
Next to little farms
And dusty fields
For centuries where donkeys
And Bedouins and camels
Passed on the way to Jerusalem.

She kneeled beside the tomatoes
With her face
And scooped up a handful of dirt
With her fingers shaking
And leaned in to the bush
Smelling the spiced air

When the sunlight washed away
Her wrinkles and puffy cheeks
And grey hair
As her narrow frame-
Vine like, stretched across
The plants and touched

The dry leaves and short thorns
Providing the only shade
An early morning could know-
And looking up
Her white blouse slipped out
And covered tomatoes,

Some still half green,
Her knees and elbows
Smudged in dirt
And like a pet,
She belonged there-
In a warm spot

Comfortable and safe
In the dirt
Near the growing and dying
Of only tomatoes-
And a singed line of imagined birds
In the sky were rockets arching over clouds

Bursting through roofs
On the other side of hills
Where little children
Were running out of a classroom
Of exploding metal and wood
Leaving bibles to burn.

REMEMBERING
(Catskill Mountains, New York)

The sun has not yet set
And Hassidic Jews are already
On the march
Lining both sides of the road
Turning the countryside
Into puffs of black smoke

With their steady strides
Casting shadows
Black on black in a straight cow-line
Up the hill past dirty-white bungalows
Peeling from age and neglect.

My father slows down
And whispers to himself
Becomes more careful
As his hands
Turn the steering wheel
Slowly

From across his shoulder
He strains to see the street sign
At the corner of the road
The same road he drove by
The day before
And the day before that.

We return from the post office
With mail and bills from people he forgets
As mother packs and repacks
So that the bungalow
Can be boarded up
And put to sleep
For the oncoming winter.

We sit at the kitchen table
Play cards
And his hands shake
When suddenly
A name comes to mind

And he starts
To tear remembering how cold,
How damp, how lonely, how awful the stink
Of death, sweat and fear was
In the wooden barracks of Auschwitz

As the sunset
And late summer wind
Sweep aside leaves
That brush against the front door
And tiny drops of blue and yellow light
Press against the living room windows.