By Michel Steven Krug
Another night, so far beyond famished,
the stubby pencil rescued from gravel
sharpened by secret pebbles to
write about the ingredients of normalcy.
Ilona from Budapest narrates:
two cups of flour, 3/4 cup sugar,
an egg or two (depends on size),
a finger of baking powder,
touch of vanilla,
crushed sugar cubes,
1/2 cup diced tart cherries.
The mind travels to a Shabbat dinner
leaving the nihilist barracks, taste of torts
and coffee displacing arid mouths
and acrid hope, imagination baking cakes of
liberation served at future tables
where the progeny is not just from two but of a
whole collection of souls deprived of morning.
A note from the poet: This 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz remembrance poem is inspired by uncountable sources, but most recently an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune.
I’m a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist, Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate, and practicing lawyer. I’m also Senior Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine. My poems have appeared in Mizmor Anthology 2019, PRTN, Sheepshead, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven’s Perch, Tuck Magazine, Poetry24, 2 Elizabeths, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review and others.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.
Wow Mike!!