Leo Yankevich Poems

This afterlife seven fluorescent clouds
sail the still sky mirrored in his mind.
And for a moment he truly sees
the vision gasping beyond his prayer.
...

She hears bombs raze the nunnery.
She hears F-16s on their way
back to Israel, to reload
new bombs sent from America.
...

Do you recall how I would buy champagne
with subway tokens at the Benson store,
then lick it all up from your northern breast?
            You still wore boots from Bialystok
...

He looks up at what pierces cloud,
but doesn’t know it’s epiphany—
this moment wind blows over sea
and dark’s forgiven in its tracks.
...

My grandson sees a creature in the corn,
a wolf at odds with fate, paws clasped in prayer.
Today he will have more than thin despair,
than dreams inside a kettle, old and worn.
...

Before they built this mall and palace
I flourished longer than the clouds
remember; but it wasn’t malice
caused me to be replaced by crowds.
...

A little slow and thick around the waist,
she was fond of wading in the muck.
Always late, she would walk into class,
then take her place behind a nerd or geek.
...

I'd go out, see Agnieszka behind
the splintered greyness of the wind,
red maple leaves so close I'd touch
them in their resurrected flights.
...

(Architect of the Gulag System)
for Robert Conquest

I.
...

At present there’s a mall and a strip show.
Ronald McDonald waves to passing cars.
And yet a hundred million years ago
a forest stood beneath the same bright stars.
...