Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

Your Hands

by Myra Sklarew

                                        for Dan Pagis and Eliezer

You come up behind me. You put

your two hands over my eyes.

“Guess who?” Your warm fingers

on my face. Your voice.

You are taken on a forced march

to the end of your life. A bomb

explodes. You fall bleeding in a ditch.

Your captors flee. You spit up blood.

Benedictine monks open the monastery

door. Come in, they say. At night

you go out to steal food. Soldiers

shoot at you. Barbed wire, even here.

Your name is Eliezer, God is my help.

But this god has gone away

on a long trip. Your warm fingers

on my face. Your voice.

Myra Sklarew attended Tufts University and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and studied bacterial viruses and genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Biological Institute. She conducted research on memory and prefrontal lobe function at Yale University School of Medicine. Her books include collections of poetry, short prose, essays and the forthcoming, A Survivor Named Trauma.

With thanks to Steve Castro and Public Pool where this poem first appeared.