Marina Brown

Holodomor

anyone who did not work for the state joined the collective
of the unburied dead. fruit rotted in piles behind barbed wire.
soldiers scaled the stairs, carrying sacks of grain like newborns,
smashing garrets for rounds of hard bread and tins of beans, poling
the unplowed humus field for last year’s beetroots and potatoes.
it was almost lovely, how they threw flour through the air like snow;
how seeds scattered from the bloodied hands reaching for them. 

we fell back to the tracks, the posts. as before the written word, we skinned
and drank the birches, then the acacia tree, feather-sweet against the sky and dark-
limbed. those who came from the villages began to crumple in the city parks, their eyes
and icons wrapped in cotton; in newspapers not saying Duranty Wins the Pulitzer Prize
or, Soviet Censorship Hurts Russia Most. still telling old stories – ours always of princes
and land-based transmutation. early berry. pond duck. thin fish. frog. cricket.
field mouse. dead horse. leather boot. brew of nettles. spikelet. glume.
everything that you are thinking of, now – yes – we ate that, too.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Marina Brown is a poet, editor and translator. Born in Ukraine and raised in California, she holds two bachelor’s degrees in International Relations and Russian from UC Davis and an MFA in Poetry from SDSU. She is an Editorial Assistant for Poetry International and a recipient of the Graduate Equity Fellowship, Marsh-Rebelo Scholarship and Savvas Endowed Fellowship. Her book reviews have been published in Los Angeles Review and Poetry International.