from Deaf Republic: 6

By Ilya Kaminsky
Through Vasenka: a herd of boys runs. With their icy hands they haul a policeman and for an apple a look they display the man on the asphalt. Snow falls in his nostrils. I watch him. They circle his eyes with a red pencil. They teach his neighbors to spit in two red holes. I watch the snowflakes melt in their hair. The neighbor aims in the red circle, spits. I stand on a park bench and chew snow. Boys walk west of Tedna, carrying snowflakes in their hair. A neighbor aims in the hole, spits. Walking by night with their arms lifted up from their bodies. As if they were about to leave the earth. And were trying out the wind.
Notes:
These poems are from the unfinished manuscript Deaf Republic. This story of a pregnant woman and her husband living during an epidemic of deafness and civil unrest was found beneath the floorboards in a house in Eastern Europe. Several versions of the manuscript exist.—IK
Source: Poetry (May 2009)