"Aubade" [by Jill Hoffman]

Aubade

Say I was in the camps
And my friends were all gone
And walking around me
as memories
In their grey striped pyjamas

Not lying in the Bay of Skeletons
anymore, naked

And my dog was licking my cunt

And Felix Nussbaum was painting
barbed wire
Like a necklace of lace
With a few prisoners penned in,
one shitting on a tall can

And I was in love with him
But couldn't show it because he
was dead

And I was saved by reciting poetry
in my head
But only until morning
When the trees would relinquish
darkness, barefoot

And you said I was trivializing
the Holocaust
As you scrubbed on hands and
knees
In your striped seersucker robe

-- Jill Hoffman

from Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves by Jill Hoffman (Mudfish, 2024)

Comments

[Summer Brenner]

Powerful!