The Exodus
They eat the darkness, spread it with jelly
from Auschwitz, from Treblinka,
the lemon curd and marzipan that slumped in the
faults of bodies.
The photographs are fragile, fall apart in my fingers.
Ashes, skinned from the prints,
plummet to my Jewish feet. I feel a little German
on the inside, and fuel my flames with
the fragile photographs. They were wearing black
suits, inky. Their grins are like
clouds, and the smog from their lips paint
piles of children.
Their teeth are lizards, slithering on crimson meat
and slapping spiked tails into
bone. Their cleft chins and minute ears pierce
the French tan, the cultured cheeks.
I can feel the flames gurgle, sputter. Trembling
arms, blessing over this blesséd day:
Our wounds have stopped bleeding, yet our eyes glow
like a row of white corpses.
