by Steve Zeitlin
pierced by a missile, M16 pellet,
arrow, slingshot, or spear,
this time on Ukrainian soil
a dying soldier,
twisted hands upon on his torso,
seeks to thwart the going of his life,
struggles to hold his insides in,
as the blood of thirty, forty, fifty unlived years
oozes from between his desperate fingers –
drowning his high school ring of love,
his wedding and his children—
a universal soldier’s sacrifice—
the sacred blood of time.
Steve Zeitlin is the Founding Director of City Lore, New York City’s Center for Urban Folk Culture, and co-founder of the Brevitas poetry collective. He the author of a volume of poetry, I Hear American Singing in the Rain, and twelve books on America’s folk culture. In 2016, he published a collection of essays, The Poetry of Everyday Life: Storytelling and the Art of Awareness with Cornell University Press. In 2022, he published JEWels: Teasing Out the Poetry in Jewish Humor and Storytelling (JPS/U. of Nebraska Press).
