THREE POEMS

CARS

“During the Gorbachev era…most people really
wanted blue jeans, VCRS, and most of all cars.”

— Svetlana Alexievitch

So that we can fly beyond the Urals
make all the neighbors jealous.
A car for half-uncles and second cousins.
A car for our catalogue clippings to come to life.
A car for everyone to be happy, at last.
An engine lashed by the sawed-off branches
of riverbanks, haunted by snowflakes
and the bedtime stories of our Jewish grandmothers.
If only we could’ve guessed
that the first car we’ll own in America
would be a 1984 red Audi.
That with each new kitchen appliance
we can start again, reborn, like Athena
rising from the head of Zeus.
A bit of saliva wipes down the blades of a new machine;
blood sticks our eyelids shut. Petra-oil burns
our nostrils like an advent candle on Christmas morning
guttering on a windowsill. What did we not
once have to prove to suspicious landlords?
There are no Jews here, no partisans or poets;
no traitors to the motherland.
And all we need now is a good pair of sunglasses,
a highway over every major ocean,
and to believe that the worst part is over.

THE MOURNER’S KADDISH

MACHETE ATTACKER STABS 5 AT NY RABBI’S HANUKKAH CELEBRATION

________

Elvira Basevich is a poet and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Her first book of poetry, How to Love the World won the 2019 [PANK] Books Poetry Contest. Her poems have recently appeared in Palette Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Poached Hare, TriQuarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Blackbird, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Projector Magazine, & Feminist Wire.