I, This Body — Blackbird Archive

← v19n2, Fall 2020

I, this body into which the hand of God plunges,

empty-chested, stand.

At the funeral—

Momma Galya and her puppeteers rise to shake my hand.

I fold our child in a green handkerchief,

brief gift.

You left, my door-slamming wife; and I,

a fool, live.

But the voice I don’t hear when I speak to myself is the clearest voice:

when my wife washed my hair, when I kissed

between her toes—

in the empty streets of our district, a bit of wind

called for life.

Wife taken, child

not three days out of the womb, in my arms, our apartment

empty, on the floor

the dirty snow from her boots.

war grief loss

Ilya Kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky is the winner of the 2020 Levis Reading Prize for his poetry collection Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019). The prize is awarded annually for the best first or second book of poetry published in the previous calendar year and chosen by the Department of English and its MFA in creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Kaminsky is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and has co-edited and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins, 2010) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books, 2012). He is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).