Anna Taylor
State-Crafted
(USSR, 1939)
i
Surviving
Peter left
a young man
shunted into the Siberian silences
Peter returned
his spine more bent
than his surviving grandfather’s
With a language
forged from thirst ice
hunger dirt betrayal exhaustion
His price
for what nobody wanted
to hear, locked into their own silences.
For him
some two and two anythings
still make four.
Forty years on
he washes hands;
eats with a knife and fork, with difficulty
ii
Recycled
No last words, no hugs
Monika left her young family.
She served as a human resource
in the guards’ barracks
Till her face gave her away.
As long as her hands could
wield a pickaxe she laboured
until her womb dropped out
into the hell-hole they called
The Dam, a nonesuch
for posterity;
her corpse set in the concrete.
Her price for not opening her mouth
When commanded.
iii
Reclassified
The children
were rounded up
Made into wards of state;
Told their parents were
Public enemies, Class I.
Alicia refused to believe it.
Banged her head on the orphanage walls
till she went mad and was disposed of.
Little Ivan pined
- nobody knows exactly how long -
until, presumably, he died.
Sixty years on Sasha
rarely whispers these words
guarding still a still broken heart
Page(s) 157-158
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- Ambit
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
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- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The