ekphrastic of family photo: krakow
BY ALISHA DIETZMAN
My tragedies are small. The pigeons like dishrags,
gather. The soot of a sweet earth covers our hands.
Fluid recollection: I ask if anyone else sees a hotel rug,
paprika-colored, ash at edge—a hole the size of a finger.
On the first day God created morning, night.
On the first day we drove through forests seeking rest-
ing places/graves in the abstract. Some part of the apricots
have names. Some part of us petals: becomes juice, rot.
One of the birds, stiff in flight—feather
corset. My mother’s name means pigeon, after
the sounds birds make: that throat hum, the way they collect
on sills. I remember two things: my painted horse was stolen,
and in the dark I saw them, half-rib and eye, swelling
from the trees, wet-green, soundless. The dark
looked like any other dark.
