They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips by Mark Wagenaar

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 31, 2017   They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips   Mark Wagenaar

I'd have to hear it spoken in mind somehow, my father said, of the Frisian word for hunger, but I'd settle for memory, or grief, under the category things that undo me. It's a funny thing to think. Who would be the speaker if not him? His mother, maybe, holding hands in the hospital with his father after 76 years. Married the day after the war, when the stores had no windows—the Nazis took the glass. The mourning doves might have the right vowels, or the red belly in the leafless dogwood, now winging through the sunlight peplummed through the pines, blue tarp peeled back on the cotton bales in the field beyond, Merry Christmas spraypainted in blue upon the white. Snowless, starless, a man goes on trial in France for helping refugees. Could've been your grandparents, my father says, your Pake hid in barns, woke once to mouse feet scrambling across his face, but in France it was a 2 year old in a ditch, dying of dehydration, & when I look down I've pulled the petals from the bouquet, & as I've neither French nor Frisian nor courage, all I can do is sweep the body of petals into my palms, & pour them into the cathedral of water in front of me.            Copyright © 2017 Mark Wagenaar. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips' casts its line between a speaker who is hearing a piece of familial history—a grandfather who hid in barns from the Nazis—and one of the more pressing problems of our time, the plight of Middle Eastern migrants who are fleeing war, at Christmas time. I hope the poem asks big questions of us—what is a just and merciful response to this crisis? What risks are we willing to take for the sake of the most vulnerable?" —Mark Wagenaar   Mark Wagenaar is the author of The Body Distances (A Hundred Blackbirds Rising) (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016).  He teaches at Valparaiso University and lives in Valparaiso, Indiana.   Poetry by Wagenaar   The Body Distances (A Hundred Blackbirds Rising) (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016) "Detour of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument" by Craig Santos Perez "Business" by Naomi Shihab Nye "Pantoum" by Marilyn Hacker Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038