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Drinking Tea Downwind from Auschwitz

She sits with tea beneath a tree
near the wall where Jews once wailed
and stylish women now pass over
cobblestone streets
bright colored skirts stiletto heels
fashioning this day’s final solution
to the haunting plaints of
mothers fathers children
grandparents uncles aunts neighbors
counted
crated
killed
ashes set adrift in fertile orbits
over fecund fields
the cold stone steps of
empty synagogues
the hungry roots of
a weeping tree
under which she
and tea
untouched
turn cold

Robert Nordstrom is a poet and a school bus driver living in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous literary magazines, including, among others, Verse Wisconsin, Rosebud, Main Street Rag, Pif Magazine, Staccato Fiction, and Miller’s Pond.