MEMORIAL OF REBIRTH

Bronze nexus of synapses.  Six-ton cloud.   Slender pillar.

Toothpick-and-olive of the abstract gesture.

A slate of names with crosses.  Cretulescu Church’s

brick-and-mortar East-meets-West Orthodoxy

plastered with frescos.  Plate windows black as

Iulia Manu, ten feet tall, sprung from a mass grave

and assembled imperfectly, forever turning his back to the Ministry.

How to render these old ambitions

and not lay them to rest?

The dead renew, over and over, the ways we acquiesce.

Wreaths of plastic flowers, candle wicks sunk in wax,

crooked gravestones poking through the first spring thaw

with memories, slogans, revisions, adaptations.

In video clips and on the sides of buses

their words incant to the living too much,

at first, then not enough to sustain our dissembling

new myths.  No matter what we hide from our inheritors.

Solitude invites scrutiny.  Six spotlights illuminate a memorial

we see from every side, even at night, when the names disappear.

PUPIL

What looks back now is shallow ink, the center

gravity of life emerging elsewhere,

blue stones scrubbed beneath the glacier,

blue water reflecting black clouds.

The heart says, “It is you.  It is always you,”

but the mind: trying all at once.

stephanie woolley-larrea

jay snodgrass