The Day Nicky Lived Forever
The day we dragged sixteen
Playful little sons a bitches
To the spot where a thing never dies
We found each other on our verges –
You with your reasons
And me with my scars.
You had the autistic child
Me, Nicky, the leukemia patient,
Doll-faced and miniature
And falling out of breath
As we trudged into the late-September sun
Each of us
Toting an oblong cucumber
As we waded like ibises through
The Volo Bogs of Western Illinois –
Feeling the alkaline bite
In our thighs and calves,
Sinking,
But knowing that we would all grow
To be six feet or more
Once puberty hit.
Mrs. S, S for science teacher
Or squat or space cadet,
We only guessed
She told us in questions –
Why is the bog full of acid?
Why do things never break down?
How does a tree drink a swamp dry?
We dropped our vegetables in
Beside animal carcasses, drift wood,
Medicine bottles, the Trib dated from before
I could read it.
It was the day of never-ending noon.
We smelled the stench
Of the dead but never gone.
You pulled the leaches off your legs
Like noodles off the wall
And looked at me,
Nicky now sitting patiently
On my shoulders,
The eleven year old
who would never grow another inch
the eleven year old dying man
patiently crocheting with purple fingers
the entire horizon out of his ball of yarn.
The Draining
Running on Yom Kippur
Against my better sense,
The black sparrows pass over me
Into the bleeding pink gash of the horizon
Away or toward
The mecca, the hymning half-dead Mecca
Blighting the cool remains of the day.
I rest easy
In spreading my legs
Over six slow miles –
The prairie and marshlands
Reek of mildew and milk
And I cross through a pack of black hatters
Streaming across the barren zoning plots
Like black ants carrying
Their load of crumbs,
Homes are going up
And the corn hacked down.
Wicker baskets lay at the crotches
Of cornrow like fallen hats.
I no longer feel the warmth
Of deprivation
and wish I did,
As I feel the poison spider
Crawl up my calf and thigh,
The rooftops in the distance
Burning
And the Jews
Starting to swagger,
Drunk with hunger,
Tossing like sure flames
And I give myself up to the elements –
Breathe in the autumn leafburn
And hear the foot steps
Coming to a slow,
Wet,
And yet perfectly drained.
These and other poems by Ivan Silverberg were created by experience living and working in Italy. There, he found himself surrounded by peculiar people, situations, landscapes, curiosities, and revelations. Currently he is a teaching assistant at a Chicago-land school for children with special needs. Ivan plans to pursue graduate study in the field of education beginning next Fall. However, "Italy, to me, will always remain an inspiration and a place to which I will eagerly return."
Ivan has published poetry in Indiana University’s Fusion Literary Magazine as well as the University of Illinois’ Montage Literary Magazine.
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