It is the shape of night when the smoke has cleared.
It is the shape of night after the train is gone.
I’m the one running after the train.
I’m the one calling, waving my madness stick.
Between me and the base of the stairs lies a violin.
To the bottom of the staircase flies the violin.
It sounds like chalk. Wind through barbed wire. Heavy
wooden case, cold metal handle digs my small hand.
Each time I travel the halls of school my room
disappears. Each time I’m a year too late.
The gunman haunts my dreams. Sometimes
it’s only his dogs behind the season-less door.
Transport. Train sport. Port of translation, of train-spotting.
This little train goes to Łódź, this one goes to Chełmno.
There go the trees, dancing by. There goes the wheat
field before the rains come. The color of fog.
When I look into the camera’s leavings I see
your face when I look into the camera’s leavings.
It is an embrace. A transfer of papers. Even
in sleep, your arms, your breast gives heat.
Given the choice, I’ll not open the door to the dogs.
Opening the door, it’s the moon and all her sisters.
Where the shadows begin, there will I dwell.
At shadow’s end I’ll exist again.
In Dreams, My Ancestors by RONDA PISZK BROATCH | Lemon Poetry Reed Diffuser
Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), finalist for the Sally Albiso Prize, and Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press). One of Ronda’s current manuscripts was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize, the Word Works Tenth Gate Prize, and Four Way Books Levis Prize, and she is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Winner of the Willow Springs Surrealist Poetry Prize and the Cloud Bank Poetry Prize, Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, Fugue, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is an MFA graduate at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop. In her spare time, she is a photographer, digital artist, and cat herder.
