Little Boy Blues
In a child’s painting, the hand is more mitten than glove–
a blob at the end of an arm. It’s what the maiden’s hand
looks like after the blast, fingers all melted
together by the heat of a man-made sun.
She cradles her claw, curved like a scimitar,
Jealous of the good hand learning to sew.
Pogrom
I am led into the square in a gown yellow as the sun.
In the crowd, there are mothers with small children,
laughing, suddenly hungry, reaching for the breast.
Chained to a post, I stand on a mound of sticks.
Someone waves a crucifix. A shout goes up for the torch.
The spectacle unfolds. I am the threat
they cross themselves against, the outsider
whose face they must burn to pure skull
with holes for eyes and a nose just like theirs.
Crickets of flame. I panic when my skin
crackles and splits. I am screaming like a woman
in labor too long, too narrow in the hips.
Elisabeth Murawski is the author of Heiress, Zorba’s Daughter, which won the May Swenson Poetry Award, Moon and Mercury, and three chapbooks. Still Life with Timex won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. A native of Chicago, she currently lives in Alexandria, VA.