it’s the first day of a fresh new school year when
one of your teachers looks you dead in the eye and says,
“introduce yourself.”
your classmates,
familiar to you yet all somehow strangers,
scramble for some short snippet of a way to encompass everything they
have spent the past sixteen to eighteen years accumulating.
when it’s your turn and every eye turns upon you in anticipation for you to “introduce yourself,”
you taste iron in your gums and say,
“i’m not sure yet.”
and every last one of your peers agrees.
see, for the past three years every time someone asks me how old i am,
i start to tell them “fifteen”
and i don’t think that i’m the only one when it comes to this whole crisis of identity.
see, for the past three years i look back on who i used to be
and sneer at past versions of myself,
a babushka doll of self-loathing as i once saw it so eloquently put.
how am i supposed to introduce myself
if i’m going to hate what i see looking back in probably three months?

it’s some kind of family event or holiday when
one of your relatives, or friend of a parent, friend of a friend of a friend of a coworker,
looks you dead in the eye and asks,
“what are you doing with your life?”
your cousins are all too much older, family and yet strangers,
staring wide-eyed because they remember the horror of
getting asked this by every other adult in sight.
you take two short breaths and taste iron in your gums and you say,
“i’m not sure yet.”
and everyone rushes to assure you that it’s fine not to have decided yet,
as though anyone ever actually sticks to the career path they choose when they are just
eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.
when i was thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten,
took every single interaction as an attack upon my person.
i was selfish and self-absorbed and, quite frankly,
one of the most problematic kids that i know.
not in the “scene kid who won’t stop talking about anime” kind of jokingly problematic
but the kind of problematic where i thought it was okay to
repeatedly ignore a gay friend’s request to stop throwing around the word “******.”
how am i supposed to tell you what i’m doing with my life
when less than a decade ago i was everything that i have now come to completely
and utterly hate?

it’s a social event full of friend-of-a-friends,
people who are complete and utter strangers,
meeting you for the first time so of course
they’ll look you dead in the eye and ask you,
“what’s your name?”
suddenly your heart is in your throat because there is power in names,
power that you will never shake,
and to be quite honest you have too many names to pick just one.
in a split second decision you have to assign this new person as a peer, an acquaintance,
figure out who you are mutually in contact with.
when the silence stretches a beat too long,
you taste iron in your gums and say,
“i’m not sure yet.”
maybe this time it’s not as appropriate of an answer,
and all your friends are looking at you strangely.
see, everyone i know has a different name to call me.
my best friend calls me ‘jack’ and my mother calls me ‘claire.’
my teachers struggle to figure out which one i prefer.
see, once upon a time i read an essay about how names have power.
you summon spirits by their names.
you control demons by knowing their names.
an angel’s song is its name.
i tried to divide myself into tiny pieces so that no one could ever have full control over me.
i have accepted a handful of aliases and nicknames that i respond to
sooner than the one on my birth certificate
so that no one may ever own me.

i write a lot of poetry about not knowing where i’m going.
the problem with dwelling on these things is that i am still going,
going,
going with still no destination determined.
how long can a train go in a straight line before it derails itself?
how far can a train go before it runs out of fuel?

hi, my name is jack. i like
outer space and poetry,
physics and creative writing.
hi, my name is jack. i am
not an earthling-- my home is in the stars,
somewhere far away for which i am still searching.
the marrow of my bones whispers for me to just go go go go go--
but i can’t drive on the highway without inducing anxiety,
and i don’t think i’m quite smart enough to become a rocket scientist.
i’ve just got to cross my fingers and pray
that somehow they’ll pick me to revisit the moon someday.

for Susan O'Neill Roe

What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to ****

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux ****
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
***** girl,
Thumb stump.

Babushka doll, you're an acid vase
Empty as church mornings
Devoid of all feelings;

You unravel your sullen smiles,
Ill-bred and unclean.
You are not complete.

You lost your babies.
Now you're alone.
Darling, darling, darling, how does it feel?

To feel the root of brute in the stubby heel,
Your silly scarves lost in the wheel.
Just peel off the cabbage roses

Petal by Petal,
Dismember yourself.
What a laugh!

The air has asthma,
The sun gives it T.B.
Oh dearie me!

It wheezes kisses heavier than a lecher.
Saboteur of my days,
Why must you hurt what you can?

Because you hate me, hate me.
You are an acid vase full of hate.
I can see your ruddy heart like an X-ray.

Unstick yourself from me.
I don't want you,
Your scarlet lips

Lake Baikal eyes,
or Eastern European knits.
The rings shed their gold.

Knock knock,
Dead at 30.
The last twist of the knife.

Christos Voskrese!

For Tod

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

...
I was born into this shadow of beauty we call the American dream, but I was raised in foreign silhouettes. The same exact silhouettes that raised my mother. My first memories were of her forest gods and alpine stories that have taught me how to write spiderwebs into the hearts of the miserable so my words could hold them together. My deadushka's magic could turn monsters into swans with a wink because his love was so contagious. My babushka's, on the other hand, showed me how to howl like darkness so even the wolves would know silence. I was born as spilled as it comes; as ink.  I now understand what tragedies look like at first;  ("Blessings")

As my mother picks her way across a war with me in her arms, the world catcalls that I am a half-blood puppet. The daughter with Russian strings and American footsteps. I arrive in America where I am reminded I belong here, but that was the first lie that my mother ever fed to me. To this day, it still tastes like expired love.

As my father spent all his kindness on me in the earliest years of my life I was given an English tongue and it bullied my Russian one into suicide. That is the only thing my father ever planted in me that he wanted to grow. Those seeds of words I would later bear fruit as ripe poetry.  Those fruit of the novels I will someday write as fiction into flesh. However, what is written beneath our skin doesn't necessarily always fit in our mouths. My father's greatest mistake was beating me into a ghost, but giving me the power to write about his hauntings.  His abuse moves into our house shortly after he realizes I am a tragedy, not a blessing.

As I write myself into the moon one day I will become, I meet a boy who's laughter makes all the planets look dull.  We learn to not walk like apologies, but like young legends. He was my first real taste of sunlight since I was brought here, and he spoke heaven into my eyes until I saw it. We loved each other like Peter Pan and Wendy did; deeply, cluelessly, and forever. Our immortality was a toy in the eyes of those who envied us. Yet he summoned the fires we should have feared as kids, but instead we stared into them and smiled. We were happy, and we were never sorry for that.

April 3rd, 2007. He died. That was the day I was old enough to grow out of a blessing and into the clothes of a tragedy. That was the day the heaven spilled from my eyes like the great flood and went with him. My mother theorizes that is why my eyes aren't as blue as hers anymore. The sounds of bullets hitting bodies today, even ten years later, between then and long ago, has the power to create painful afterimages of him. The post traumatic stress unfastens my blood from my my body and the poetry reacts by shutting me down all at once. Death asks me to write a spiderweb into his own heart, but I refuse.

I adopted grief into my family and he got along with abuse pretty well. To survive, I've left the nostalgia of that boy to hibernate deep in my bones.

Today is April 3rd, 2017.  I stand before a headstone that exists only sometimes in my head. I kneel before it and leave the skeleton of my love like a bouquet of roses. The shadows and silhouettes align, and I hold hands with both of them.

I weep as the odes of "it's not your fault" fall onto my ears like they do every year. From friends, lovers, and family. They mean well. Who knows, maybe someday I will have what it takes to believe them.

But he never grew up, so guilt still ***** it's wings here.

---"Sermons with a colorblind priest."

Jonathen
Jonathen wake up

She stands in my doorway
Green knitted scarf
***** pink pajamas
Eyes and skin jaundiced yellow
A ***** Babushka if I were Russian

If this were a movie I'd be cursed by now

There is a man with a shopping cart in the driveway
I think he's trying to break in*

With my baseball bat
I step outside full of all the anger I had reserved for the day

The street is empty and cold

It's the fear
We make it up
We always do

Our little teenage babushka
Carina Marie
flaxen haired beauty
with caramel pink complexion
and starlight eyes

I watch as you paint the world
with a vivid imagination and
the rich, dayglo colors of your
palette

Although I do wonder why you
hang cans from the ceiling
and tape a fork to the fan
all with an avant-garde shrug of
your shoulders
and a blasé smile

I see the hidden potential
bursting forth like a sudden
downpour of sunshine

A bright door opens in
the golden mist

I am the mother of Andy Warhol.

Right from beginning, Andy was special.
When his brothers go to school, he
stay home with me. I like to draw
picture...and so did he. We even
draw picture of each other. I like
to draw cat a lot and so did he. When
he is little boy, I leave room for one
minute and he not there when I come
back. "Where is my Andek?" I ask.
"Where he go?" and everyone is laughing.

I know early on Andy not like other boys.
He go into town with me and pick out
hat for me. One time he pick out black
felt hat and then he go home and paint
edge of hat so it has gold edge. It look
beautiful. I also like to cut tin flowers
out of fruit tin cans and soup cans too.
And Andy always help me. Just a little
boy but he take after his Mom.
He was artist even then.

Long time go by and Andy become grown
man. I visit him in New York and tell
him he need me. Then I go back to
Pittsburgh but I miss him. I pack up
and come back to New York and move in
with him.

The first apartment we live in not very
nice, filled with cats and mice and
roaches. Cats everywhere. Once I count
twenty cats and still mice all over!

I go to gallery one night for opening
of Andy's first show. When I get there I
have odd feeling. People there they look
at me like I'm different, strange. I feel this
but no one say nothing to me. I think
they say things behind my back maybe.
You know what I mean? "Andy's Old Mom
with babushka is from Old Country." I
just stay in background all the time.
I no talk to nobody but Andy. I tell
him how proud I am and to do right
thing and find his ideas in dreams.
Those are my words. But I no go to no
other show of his work. Ever!

He is still good son to me always but he
worry too much about money. When I
move here he take me to Woolworth's
for Thanksgiving Day dinner. We sit at
counter and have turkey platter with
everything. It is not bad food but Andy
look so sad because he have no money
then. I tell him not to worry. "You will
be somebody someday. You are hard worker,"
I say. "Just wait. Be patient."

Even though I complain sometime, I like
my life here. I watch I Love Lucy show
on television. And people in New York
very friendly and everyone in apartment
building polite and helpful. I go to
big church - very nice - on 15th Street
and 2nd Avenue where I see all my friends
and every day I go to A&P; to buy food.
And I like Andy's friends. They kid with
me and tease me and I laugh. They know
I love my son and am good for him always.

Andy does get angry with me sometime.
He say I nag too much. I tell him he
no dress right. I tell him right out
that I only stay with him till he find
nice girl and get married. That is my
dream. Once he get married, I tell him
I go home to Pittsburgh. He never say
nothing when I bring this up. He is
good boy but moody, very moody sometime,
not a talker like his Mom, ya?

About an hour later she slipped
Yuri Andropov into the conversation:
“I have to drop off a blouse at the dry cleaners.”
Suddenly it was May Day &
I’m back in Red Square,
Dwarfed beneath larger than life
Lenin, Engels & Marx mug shots.
Inter-continental ballistic lorry loads
Roll past the reviewing stand, while
Geezer Reds in Ushanka fur hats,
****** on Stoli, reeking of borscht,
Chain-smoke cheap Soviet Belomors.
I share these thoughts, handing
Mrs. Khrushchev the car keys.
Having cowered herself in terror,
Having ducked & covered many
Burial promises & shoe-pound threats,
She gives me a tired babushka smirk.
We are conjugal Cold Warriors,
Both weary now, creeping up on 70,
Skirmishes & brinksmanship behind us.
Tolerant of each other at last;
Lukewarm détente between us.

A Sequence of Poems for Holy Week

(Some of these were submitted in past years)

Holy Thursday 2017

On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb
From the belly of a beast, falling, falling
From the Empyrean and through the blue
Past mountaintops and misted valleys deep

And then into the planet’s earthen flanks
Its pulses to repudiate Creation
In vaporizing the structures of life
Into primeval molecules of dust

Because some bad men might be lurking there
On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb



Maundy Thursday – Mass of the Last Supper

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”

-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night



6 April 2012, Good Friday

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness.



7 April 2012, Holy Saturday

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.
All the house settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.



Easter, 2014

Christos Voskrese!

For William Tod Mixson

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.