<p>Seaworthy</p>
<p><br>His body's the marsh of north <br>Jersey, brackish water, <br>cattails. The turnpike all <br>exhausted gravel up to New York. <br>Yellow stalks stick up from the muck. <br>I can't walk across him; I'd sink. </p>
<p>He's a wild persimmon, picked <br>from the briers. Sour, bitter, <br>wrinkled. He's heart pine, gold-<br>soft. He's still awake at four <br>in the morning, and sick. </p>
<p>He's a shtetl in Russia. It's 1904, <br>the pogrom fires stink and smoke. <br>He's an old newsboy cap. Silk lining <br>orange and frayed. He's woolen. <br>Scratchy but warm, even when wet. </p>
<p>He's in his body on the beach, Coney <br>Island, the salt sings fritters and beer. <br>He watches the boys strut in uniform, <br>link their arms in the pink arms of strange <br>girls. He is so still feels shells <br>
turning to sand, and the giant creak <br>of the coasters climbing their tracks. <br>They click up, up and up; then let go.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To Keep the House Quiet</p>
<p><br>Father closes the door when he teaches little sister <br>music. Myron has a stub of charcoal. <br>He draws her playing great-uncle's violin. <br>Draws it how it is, the violin too big, <br>her hair pulled back with twine.</p>
<p>The horsehair bow, brought over on the boat, <br>smells of Russian cart-horse. <br>Myron doesn't know how to draw <br>smell, or the way his stomach yellows <br>during the long silences.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eighth Nerve</p>
<p><br>Something is wrong with Myron's<br>ears. It always sounds like it's<br>raining. Or the sound, sometimes,<br>of galloping horses. <em>Better <br>not to mention this.</em> He tries <br>hitting his head against his bed-<br>
post. No change but a small <br>bruise, safe under his hair. </p>
<p>Far off, the front door bangs. <br>Father, home from work, beats<br>his boots against the mud-room<br>sink. <em>And that is really <br>happening,</em> Myron thinks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Daybreak</p>
<p><br>Myron is gone. Become<br>flat as the others. Grayfaced,<br>he eats his rations, and after, <br>sings sailor songs with the men.</p>
<p>All day he drops depth charges<br>on submarines with no curdle<br>in his guts, the inside of his stomach<br>clean and rosy as a gentile's.</p>
<p>But this is a nightmare. Myron <br>wakes. Still Myron, fresh as a wet<br>cut. His bed sways sickly.</p>
<div>Waking comes hard as the lace<br>crust of ice on the sea, brittle <br>and stinging. <em>Brittle and stinging,<br></em>thinks Myron. He can hear his sister<br>in her room practicing Beethoven's <br>seventh, the movement in A minor. <br>
Their favorite key. The four beats, <br>heavy as walking, as waking.<br>Myron does it. Lifts his salt-caked<br>chest, breathes, and marches down <br>the bright cold hall, to the sound.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Miller Oberman was the 2005 recipient of Poetry Magazine's Ruth Lilly Fellowship and has recently had poems in <em>Bloom Magazine</em>, the <em>Minnesota Review</em>, and <em>Lilith</em>. Miller lives in Brooklyn with Zero Oberman.</div>
<div><br>-- <br>RealPoetik<br><a href="http://realpoetik.blogspot.com">realpoetik.blogspot.com</a> </div>