Wartime Kitchen

I think of Yannis Ritzos’s women
marching to the kitchen at the first sound of war
I think of the bulk of Grandma in Jersey City,
a bulk I could never duplicate as I pad across
the floor to grind the sweet basil grown
last season, to brush the cat, to chop garlic
for salad dressing
Deliberately quiet tasks, though I could start
throwing pots around like my mother, I can tell you
make such a ruckus you would wonder who had
gone insane, and it’s the world
in the photos I will not bring home,
in the leering sneering posture of an imposter
president, put in charge by corporate fists
I could show you how weeping has worn a hole
in my heart as deep as the slippers
she thrust her feet in cold Polish mornings,
I’ve become that babushka woman
witnessing carnage, all wisecracks are out
of place, no jokes for broken children or screaming
mothers, dead soldiers are children themselves
No jokes for the children, everybody’s children
I do not forgive their slaughter
the oil the arms the gold piled high as this hous