Poems by John Guzlowski - part 2

3. The beets

She tells me of the beets she dug up
In Germany. They were endless, redder
Than roses gone bad in an early frost,
Redder than a big man's kidney or heart.

The first beet she remembers,
She was alone in the field, alone
Without her father or mother near,
No sister even. They were all dead,
Left behind in Lvov. The ground was wet
And cold, but not soft, never soft.

She ate the raw beet, even though
She knew they would beat her.

She says, sometimes she pretended
She was deaf, stupid, crippled,
Or diseased with Typhus or cholera,
Even with what the children called
The French disease, anything to avoid
The slap, the whip across her back
The leather fist in her face above her eye.

If she could've given them her breasts
To suck, her womb to penetrate
She would have, just so they would not
Hurt her the way they hurt her sister
And her mother and the baby.

She wonders what was her reward
For living in such a world. It was not love
Or money. She can't even remember
What happened to the deutsche marks
The American sergeant left that day
In the spring when the war ended.

4. What the war taught her

My mother learned that sex is bad,
Men are worthless, it is always cold
And there is never enough to eat.

She learned that if you are stupid
With your hands you will not survive
The winter even if you survive the fall.

She learned that only the young survive
The camps. The old are left in piles
Like worthless paper, and babies
Are scarce like chickens and bread.

She learned that the world is a broken place
Where no birds sing, and even angels
Cannot bear the sorrows God gives them.

She learned that you don't pray
Your enemies will not torment you.
You only pray that they will not kill you.

Biographical sketch John Guzlowski

John Guzlowski received an Illinois Arts Council Poetry Award for Language of Mules, a book of poems about his parents' experiences as slave laborers and displaced persons in Nazi Germany during and after the Second World War.

His poems have also appeared in such journals as Atlanta Review, Negative Capability, Manhattan Review, and Madison Review.

His essays on Isaac Singer and other contemporary American authors have appeared in Polish Review, Shofar, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Modern Fiction Studies, The Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Studies in Jewish American Literature, and the Polish quarterly Akcent.

Currently, he teaches Contemporary American Literature and Poetry Writing at Eastern Illinois University.

His email address is jzguzlowski(at)eiu.edu

© John Guzlowski

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