{"id":17609,"date":"2022-04-01T00:01:15","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T05:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=17609"},"modified":"2022-03-29T18:02:43","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T23:02:43","slug":"the-past-doesnt-rise-like-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/17609","title":{"rendered":"The Past Doesn\u2019t Rise Like Smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t envy even\u00a0<\/em>
\n————<\/span>a second of your life<\/em>,
\nmy mother says, not\u00a0<\/em>
\n————<\/span>a single second<\/em>. Babushka
\nagrees, pities me, the two
\n————<\/span><\/em>unmanageable kids,
\nthe disabled husband.
\n————<\/span>It\u2019s just so hard for you<\/em>,
\nshe says, recalling
\n————<\/span><\/em>how her face burned
\nwhen she was left
\n————<\/span><\/em>on the top bunk of the train
\nevacuating her family
\n————<\/span><\/em>from Kyiv, the city not yet
\nsurrounded, but certain
\n————<\/span><\/em>to fall. War, more than
\nmemory. War
\n————<\/span><\/em>the way\u00a0she names
\nher life. Missing
\n————<\/span><\/em>without a trace. Her father
\nstayed back, died, and after him,
\n————<\/span><\/em>she named her daughter
\nLight. He has to lie at Babyn Yar.\u00a0<\/em>
\n————<\/span>Where else?<\/em> She asks, watching
\nthe third-night candle smoke.
\n————<\/span><\/em>I do not say black earth
\nis made of all our dead.
\n————<\/span><\/em>I do not say I\u2019m tired
\nof counting them. I say,
\n————<\/span><\/em>I will keep trying
\nto find his name.
\n————<\/span><\/em>I say, our people
\nare made of miracle
\n————<\/span><\/em>and half believe it
\nwhen I ask my father
\n————<\/span><\/em>about his dead.
\nHe doesn\u2019t know
\n————<\/span><\/em>their names,
\njust that they never left
\n————<\/span><\/em>Odesa. The shochet\u00a0<\/em>
\nneighbor survived, he recalls,
\n————<\/span><\/em>severed\u00a0chicken heads
\nthe godly way and lit
\n————<\/span><\/em>Hanukkah candles
\nin their courtyard. He remembers
\n————<\/span><\/em>smoke rising
\nagainst December,
\n————<\/span><\/em>gray on black until
\nthere was no trace
\n————<\/span><\/em>of flame. But the past
\ndoesn\u2019t rise like smoke.
\n————<\/span><\/em>There is nowhere for it to go
\nmissing. The past is every
\n————<\/span><\/em>fried potato and charred wick.
\nMy son\u2019s\u00a0nail singed, singing
\n————<\/span><\/em>over the candles,
\nthe wrong words
\n————<\/span><\/em>of a Hebrew\u00a0blessing
\nwe were never taught.
\n————<\/span><\/em>The past rises
\nlike swifts, perhaps, who stay
\n————<\/span><\/em>aerial for months, digging
\nfor earth\u00a0in the clouds,
\n————<\/span><\/em>abandoning the sky only
\nto make more birds,
\n————<\/span><\/em>who will rise and rise
\nin swarms from narrow
\n————<\/span><\/em>chimneys, who will refuse
\nto smoke, who will return only
\n————<\/span><\/em>once having left
\ntheir names\u00a0carved
\n————<\/span><\/em>in unsuspecting air.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Julia Kolchinksy Dasbach<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t envy even\u00a0 ————a second of your life, my mother says, not\u00a0 ————a single second. Babushka agrees, pities me, the two ————unmanageable kids, the disabled husband. ————It\u2019s just so hard for you, she says, recalling ————how her face burned when she was left ————on the top bunk of the train evacuating her family ————from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[71],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-4A1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17609"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17621,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17609\/revisions\/17621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}