When we ask our Russian friend,
the hardship thieves sprout out of ground.
Our spying self sits up at night, frozen
in extremes, shivered with mercury,
pouring over pocketfuls of candlelight
bathed in a birthday wish. We have pinched
her Russian pain. We think we know, but
have not shared her fear like a gift.
On that day, blame our skin
like a room, its window shut and wheezing
slower than a husband’s, air escaping
from lungs, where the party ends
in small balloons. Even on our birthday,
we spy as we slice the neck
of Romanesco broccoli its chartreuse
past our Russian friend tells when potatoes
or cabbage, let alone anything so baroque
as Romanesco won’t sustain, will rot
on the shelf of the Occupation—nine hundred
days. Only the pyramid grain pointing from a hard
shell—not the softer barley, rye,
wheat, rice, but the buckwheat,
its name so bully so buck up
will stiff upper lip.
We listen to our Russian friend because we grew in a time of cold
war and we forget she did, too, on the other
side. We graze each other’s faces, voracious.
We love her so much a mystery,
a hunger, a wish but somehow safe
from outer Siberia, her sentence
in translation, hanging
on words. When she tells—flocks of crows
chill Moscow hills, a crust of stale black
bread she did not share, bribing men
with alcohol clear as water, a shimmer like mercury
waiting birthdays after birthdays
for the next war having lived
so much war always the jar sealed,
holding seed not rice not rye,
buckwheat like barnacles shut tight
when the water left them, grains
we will store and store, will
not waste. We will boil
them the day before they turn rancid
and make a birthday
wish that the button will not push
while the jar sits empty, washed,
upside down on a high shelf.