SOMEONE ELSE'S
LIVID DAY
Someone Else's Livid Day
The headline doesn’t mention epigenetics, but
startles with words like trauma
and holocaust, and a bright picture
of DNA Chagalled in space, curlicued
in dots of protein held
magnetically on their given lines,
like a corkscrew of music, or the barbs
on an electrified fence,
the fence behind which the children
stand, each tied in a dirty rag
that covers their ears against
the freezing Polish wind. You can see them,
striped clothes sized for someone else,
bellies distended, even the tendril
of a girl, who sways near the others,
eyes demanding to be held,
arm open to the number tattooed
there, and on her son, years later,
whose vicious fists will writhe
against ‘yid’ and ‘sheeny’
or later, her grandson,
against ‘jew-bag’ and ‘zog’—
each printed in rope-bridge code
deep within the children
of those lucky enough
to survive their own ravenous
seasons, displayed in crisp reality
as each DNA is unrolled like a Torah scroll,
read out loud each shabbat, memories
that drag a language into the marrow,
into the bones, into the savage
hand of someone else’s livid day,
spread generation to generation.
Look deeply
into the DNA of my own children.
There you will find me, a little girl, dark
hair too long and torn underpants, unconscious
on a tiled floor because I couldn’t
remember my times tables.
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This poem first appeared in Pigeonholes Journal
https://pidgeonholes.com/2018/12/two-poems-15/​​​
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