A Trip to Milwaukee

Aaron Mom, Mom Aaron, Dad, preevyet,
Grandpa, Grandma, kak deela Aaron.

The table is set. Pickled watermelons, potatoes,
pickled beats, horse radish sauce and fish

because I’m vegetarian. Russian tongues
fly over the food from mouth to mouth.

I am left alone translating a language
I don’t understand. The mother says,

blacks should have to work harder
to get welfare, a sudden switch to English.

When we came from Moldova through Italy
we lived in shoebox. Nic had to work

in the warehouse until we bought the liquor store.
She looks straight at me. They’re our best customers,

it’s a waste. Back to the mother tongue.
There’s hard air, pickled breathing, better store up

for the winter, drink a shot for “how they say?
to the health, yes?” During dessert Glazounov climbs

over the conversation, offers a glimpse into elegant
displaced roots descending beneath the table.

Remembering Reading Raskolnikov Last Summer

Only one man reads, not two.
Not for meaning. A rabid car
swerves, careening into a dead
oak. The windows open
to the sound of beer nights
and trash can Tuesday mornings.

One day bored of my bed, went
downtown to library, sat in the saddle
of the blazing sun trying to concentrate,
black words packed tight on white page
wouldn’t walk with a wandering mind
that day and of course, at noon,

the climax, fifty pages from the end
with you in Milwaukee 300 miles away
and us breaking down you kept calling,
we kept talking, going nowhere
and I just wanted to know if he’d cave,

if the sweat rolling off his forehead
while standing in front of the commissioner
or wandering back alley Russia cobblestone streets
with the ghost of an axe haunting
and perfect planning gone awry

would put a noose around his own neck,
hang him for the numberless criminal readers
reasoning out their own murder. It’s unbearable
not knowing the future and you must plan
and you must know, but plans don’t last

and you can’t know your own self
well enough to survive a murder,
to bear the guilt, to walk away unbloodied,
stash the jewels in a wall and sick
for weeks on the verge of confession.

Only one man reads another man
and knows. Locked in a white room
no windows good lighting white sheets,
alone except for him
is how it should go, how the end should come,
the final truth revealed, no phone, no music,

no weight of your words saying over and over,
“Why did you do it?”