2004 - Vol. 1, Issue 6

"Transfiguration"

All night, I explore the contours
of your legs. Fitting my hands

around your knees, I know - solid -.
I knead the muscles of your calves,

hold your ankles, tightly. Your skin
surprises my lips and I want to drink

your smoothness. How else can I quench
this thirst? I want to break your bones.

Make them mine. Your body holds all
the secrets. Give them to me now -

in the dark. Your smooth skin over
my twisted bones - the perfect disguise.

"The Burden of Memory"

they tell us    remember
six million Jews    killed
and I remember

my father told me    remember
and I tried
to tell him

the pink triangle
lower than
the yellow star

and I tried to tell him
my legs are not
perfect    I would have been

undesirable
they tell us    remember
six million Jews    murdered

and I remember
in The Village Voice
an historian in California knows

six million Jews    alive
hiding beneath
the New York City subway

they tell us    remember
six million Jews    exterminated
and in movies    trains

symbols of walking
to death
and they cannot

imagine a happy ending

they tell us    remember
and I remember
outside Ya'ad Vashem

the Holocaust museum
in Jerusalem
there is a boat

Denmark sailed seven thousand Jews

to safety
and a garden
planted by survivors

to remember
those who saved them
(Ya'ad Vashem    a hand and a name)

and I remember my father
praying to this God
but I cannot believe

an imperfect God
who lets his chosen people
die    an imperfect God

who made my legs imperfect
I remember
Hasidic Jews in Borough Park

listening to the radio
and waiting for the Messiah
FDR did not

bomb Auschwitz but
the Americans did liberate
the concentration camps

my father told me    remember
six million Jews    killed
but not of a distant cousin

hid
on a farm in Southern France
Christians saved him

and though we can find
our saviors
we still remember

the stars, the trains,
hear the lies
yes

I remember
six million Jews    killed
and others saved

they tell us
this could not happen
here    I remember

bombs not dropped
words not spoken
action not taken

and ask    who
will save us

and who will save
my Jewish lover

and know
saving was not enough
and if saving is not enough

what is

tell me the answer
I will remember

"from The Healing Notebooks"

"(12 )"

Begin with scraps of paper, odd
sentences, someone else''s phrases -

There is always something to be made
of pain.    But art is once
removed,

the widow knitting scarves,
the lover quilting names,

where was I in 1981? '82? '83? Ask
whose signature was stamped on the orders?

Sarah says, People with AIDS need drugs
not fiction about AIDS.  There, I use

the name in someone else's name.
Not one of my poems ever saved

one Jew.    And still I sit all day as if choosing the right word could save your life.

"(13)"

Voices across the lake - not yours
but unfamiliar laughter.   This afternoon,

sitting on the dock, I watched the swallows
skim the surface of the lake. Without warning,

a large heron flew right before my eyes
and disappeared beyond the next cove.

I turned for your reaction -
you weren't there. I went inside.

All summer I've been talking to you
and you're not here. You told me

you didn't want to know I was afraid.
You said all I could write about was

your dying. Can't you see that's not true. I'm writing about our lives.

"The Healing Notebooks (12)" first appeared in Five Fingers Review. The Healing Notebooks was published as a chapbook by Open Books, Berkeley, California, 1990.

"Transfiguration" first appeared in The Disability Rag.

"The Burden of Memory" first appeared in The Sentinel.

from The Healing Notebooks.

All poems copyright 1996 by Kenny Fries. These poems appeared in Anesthesia: Poems (The Advocado Press) and are reprinted by permission of the author.