I huddle in a thicket I have been through this for centuries
Seeing not stopping it hearing screams pleas screeches shots
I still want to whisper to yell to stave off disasters
but my words are ghost breath traveling down centuries
I know about the arched spine in pain
the bones whittled down thinned by loss
I know the closed eyes that can’t stop seeing
blue eyes brown eyes hazel ones drained of hope
I know there are no sentences for horror for killing
Just broken words like ankle bone breast bone thigh bone
No dreaming flesh no dreaming bodies
No dreaming breath always prophecies that come to pass
No one listens to my warnings just darkened earth
withered grasses stones of remembrance
And the blue thread of an empty story
in an endless labyrinth of grief
Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz where she taught creative writing, memoir, creative nonfiction courses as well as American Literature, Women’s Literature, the Literature of Witnessing, and Holocaust Literature. Her poetry has been published in over one hundred journals including The Cream City Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Phoebe, The Chiron Review, Memoir(and), The Westchester Review, Wind, and The Vassar Review. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize Series. She had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000). Her chapbook The Earth Was Still was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time, by Word Temple Press. Her volume of poetry Foraging for Light was published by Finishing Line Press. And her chapbook about Bess Houdini, the wife of Harry Houdini, entitled Over the Moon Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini, recently was published by Palooka Press.