A YEAR AFTER THE CARPENTER AND AN NPR JOURNALIST HUDDLE BESIDE A WOOD-BURNING FIRE IN LVIV

by Ellen Sazzman

Bohdan Kulik served in the Soviet military in the early 1980s in Moscow. He's done a bunch of odd jobs over the years since, he says, but in essence, he's a carpenter. He loves to make staircases. Photo by Ryan Kellman. —NPR, March 17, 2022

1

“My true love is building staircases,” the carpenter explains.  

“You must understand the difficulties of crafting a staircase.   

First the wood must be stained. Next...” The journalist 

interrupts, asks if the carpenter is worried about the war.    

 

The carpenter mans a checkpoint. Without a gun but with a crate 

of Molotov cocktails. His job: to stop cars, look for saboteurs.  

He pulls out his phone and shows videos of Russian destruction 

farther east in Kharkiv and Mariupol.  

 

The journalist asks again if the carpenter is worried.  

The carpenter chops kindling, feeds the stove, puts a kettle on.  

He offers coffee, says he’s 62, a pensioner. The carpenter repeats 

the importance of what goes into making a staircase:  

 

collecting accurate measurements, calculating the slope, installing 

risers, treads, handrails. The carpenter pulls out his phone once more, 

shares photos of staircases he has built. The journalist compliments

the staircases:  “They’re beautiful, but about the war?”    

                                                                                                        

2

After one year, a long nightmare, try to 

imagine the beauty of staircases, 

the smell of coffee, the warmth of a stove.  

Not the blood of suffering. Not the bombing.  

Not the decision to stay put  

despite what staircases are made for—  

scaling, leaving, fleeing 

through fumes and smoke, through 

a fine ash that still invades Lviv from the East 

and shrouds all things with the salt 

of a terrible weeping before a mute god.  

Pray there is dust enough

to re-make wild birds and beasts, 

to re-form woman and man, to re-plant.

Ellen Sazzman is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has been recently published in Peregrine, Delmarva Review, Another Chicago Magazine, PANK, Connecticut River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Moment, Common Ground, and CALYX, among others. Her collection The Shomer was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize and a semifinalist for the 2020 Elixir Antivenom Award and the 2019 Codhill Press Poetry Award.

CHECKPOINT

by Alejandro Escudé

San Diego County middle school teacher Shane Parmely was detained for more than an hour by Border Patrol agents at a checkpoint in New Mexico because she refused to say whether she was a U.S. citizen. Parmely’s family helped her film the incident, which she posted Friday evening on her Facebook account in several segments that were widely shared. Parmely told Border Patrol agents that she believed she did not have to answer their questions. One agent showed her a card listing immigration law and a Supreme Court case decision that give Border Patrol agents authority to operate checkpoints within 100 miles of the border and to ask questions about citizenship without warrants. —Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2017

You can read the officer's question
On the road: "Citizens?"

It is written in moon-white
And it is perfect in its dimensions

Like a geoglyph or an alien crop circle.
It will not wear away.

The teacher's answer is also on the road,
Afloat like a raven's feather

That refuses to succumb
To the asphalt, a ragged wind-bone,

A time traveller without an end.
The tumbleweed heart of New Mexico.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.