Suite: Anna Votova

I Anna Votova Saves the Mill

After the fever there was no one 
left to pollard the graveyard elms, 
but at least the ground was soft.
A week after our parents burned away, 
the men came from Bratislava
to help, they said, but their faces
were the faces of wolves at winter’s end. 
So with the women I went to the mill, 
wearing the shoes of the dead.
And when we returned much later, 
flour-ghosted, the elms threw
long shadows over our silver skins. 
The men went back to Bratislava.

II Anna Votova Raises Her Siblings

This was the way of things: 
Karl, Antonin, Jaroslav, Lukás 
ate their hard bread at school, 
and mine I ate at the mill.
Sundays I taught little Klara to fill 
sausages, thick as her bloody wrists.

III	Anna Votova Bears Ten Children

Seven lived long enough 
to taste my milk,
bathe in the sweet forest air. 
Six lived long enough
to wonder at their father’s 
solemn eyes, hold his raw hands.

IV Anna Votova Embarks for America

The sea-spray stuck like pine sap,
lay trapped against our skins for days. 
One morning, among the others asleep 
in that mushroom damp, I called up 
my irises, their scent like plums,
their mouths open for the hungry bees.

V Anna Votova Sits for a Family Portrait

Quite still, said the photographer
over the shouting tongues in the street 
below. I hushed a grandson
and in secret slipped my fingers 
over the sofa’s silk brocade, green
as sage. How strange, this smooth place. 
In a stiff dress, black boots glinting,
lace foaming at her neck, my girl 
curled her lip. Waiting, I learned,
to sneak through the fresh snow to taste 
a soft bun, sugar-dusted, offered
for her smile by a man from Bratislava, 
which is to say, now, home.

Read more from Issue 16.2.