The Nine Children of Mariana Gluza
who died before the age of eighteen torment my father
who is dead he didn’t mention them
his first cousins what does it mean if your family
erases you as a child was the grief of your death
too much to bear or were you replaceable
another bulb in the garden another late-night mattress
soaked with longing or duty another prayer
I confess it is not just my father tormented
trauma takes the tongue historians of trauma write
smothers the cradle but facts don’t die
so easily I found his mountain village House 198
where he lived with my grandmother in WWI
his aunt Marianna her children three died there
Marianna I said Marianna as I walked the house
starvation or typhus cholera the Flu
Natalia aged 4 yelled Tadek my father didn’t answer
he was watching the family peacock Maria aged 3
coughing in bed so much phlegm I choked
my father ran out into the snowstorm
two children wailed until they didn’t
I saw my grandmother Teresa in Philadelphia
white apron aunt of eight dead nieces and nephews
no I forgot one
in that house a child’s sled a painted chair
a bullet hole in the wall an abandoned bird’s nest
the frame and sinews of a family knit
together my cousins met me in the village
grandchildren of Marianna’s three daughters
who survived but they only knew so much
there was the Second War forced labor
the camps and
this I know my father boycotted funerals
when he couldn’t comfort the bereaved
didn’t visit me in the hospital at eighteen
in college alone four hours away by car
a blood clot in my leg swollen twice its size
said he was certain I’d be okay
was terrified of death I tell myself now
my cousins Teresa and Zbyzisk on All Souls
lit candles with me on family graves at dusk
we found Marianna with her husband among
the rows of tombstones bouquets lanterns
vines across her barely legible name
Buczkowice, Poland, 2017