Two poems by Alisha Erin Hillam
Violin Man
He plays Lysenko every evening until eight,
standing out from the other buskers
in his pressed three-piece suit, white hair garnishing
his temples, serious and straight-backed.
Between Wawel and the river, the boulevard
park is always busy, but I find him every
night by the sound of his thin, practiced fingers skimming
his bow along the strings, the melody lifting
into the air like an entreaty to keep the dragon
spitting fire toward the east. His case is
always open, holding a handful of złoty and several of his
own CDs. A small blue and yellow flag.
Pierogi in Oświęcim
Afterwards, we eat four kinds of pierogi
in a late lunch, and it feels obscene
given what we have witnessed.
My stomach is still knotted and the café
feels unthinkable. That forty thousand
people live here—the descendants
of the Polish half of town—along with
bowling lanes and KFC and railroad
tracks that still get used: all that feels
unthinkable too. I consider that
Oświęcim’s first eight hundred years
of history are another kind of victim.
I consider how, before all this, the town
was known as Oshpitzin—a word
for hospitality. The Yiddish word for guests.
A Pushcart-nominated writer, Alisha Erin Hillam’s work has appeared in various publications, including Passages North, Rust & Moth, TAB, and ONLY POEMS. She opposes apartheid and genocide in all its forms around the world. #FreePalestine
