Full Moon Poets at 101 Artists' Colony

Jon Wesick's chapbook "My Father's Ashes" was a runner up in the San Diego Book Awards. His poems have appeared in "American Tanka," "Limestone Circle," "Slipstream," "The TMP Irregular," "Vol. No. Magazine," and other small press journals. He has a Ph.D. in physics and has worked in medicine, software, and communications. He is a long time student of Buddhism and the martial arts. "My Father's Ashes" can be purchased at the 101 Artists Colony or on amazon.com.

ISLAND IN A SEA OF DREAD

Adolf Eichmann rides electromagnetic waves
from the channel 9 broadcast tower to my living room.
He flings his death's head cap on my hat rack
and packs my thoughts into boxcars
already crammed with Jews on their way to Zyklon-B showers.
The train stretches for miles and miles
longer than I can see.
The sound of wheels on rails haunts me.
Gulag, Treblinka, Rwanda, Armenia!
Gulag, Treblinka, Rwanda, Armenia!
I pen protest, angry as letter bombs,
and mail them to God, but they come back
marked, "Addressee Unknown."

I tire of waiting for the mail
and walk to the beach.
The universe tries to comfort me, but how can I trust it?
I wave to the musician practicing his horn by the railroad tracks behind the parking lot.
A man rides by on a bicycle,
balancing one dog on the handlebars
and another over the rear wheel.
A couple releases helium balloons one by one.
They form a constellation in the daytime sky.
Another man builds a sand castle.
I've seen him here before.
Today, he carves stairs, windows, and turrets with a credit card.
I admire it and listen to a reggae band playing close by.
The tide moves closer.

-------------------------------

The following poem appeared in Edgz, Number 3, Winter/Spring, 2002.

PARTING GIFTS¹

Cement block apartments litter the highway
from my hotel to Tallinn's old town.
Leftovers from Estonia's former Soviet occupiers -
drab peeling paint and weathered wood.
Rusty padlocks
secure sooty abandoned factories behind chain-link fences

Someone's installed a nightclub in one.
The green sign and blue awning emerge from a mass
of broken windows, rubble, and blackened smokestacks.
Free enterprise brings gas stations and traffic jams.
Trendy shops compete for tourist dollars
along the medieval city's convoluted cobblestone streets.

A sign requests donations for renovations
inside the big Russian Orthodox church
across from the pink parliament building.
Why give money to those who enslaved my ancestors?
Still, I admire the huge chandeliers, vibrant icons,
and sky-blue ceiling with six-pointed gold stars.
I drop a coin in the box.

Later, a sudden thunderstorm pelts me with rain.
I take cover in an art gallery.
A handsome young man in a straw hat
has been stranded too.
He asks about my taste in music,
says he plays drums in a rockabilly band,
and tells me he's one of the Russians
left behind after the Soviet pull-out.

The storm clears.
I tire of trying to comprehend his halting English.
He struggles on
attempting to communicate long after I would have quit.
He stammers, "Now Eesti parliament - Russians..."
and kicks his foot as if booting a piece of garbage from his path.

Rasputin joins us. He tears the cap
from a vodka bottle and throws it away.
"Let's go this way." He points down a deserted alley.
Fearful for my ticket home in the money belt chafing my belly
I make excuses, walk away, and duck into a cafe
to make sure they don't follow.
I realize ethnic cleansing's cause
sometime between the main course and dessert.

¹Estonia lost much of its population after both the Nazis and Soviets invaded during WWII. During the Soviet occupation from 1944 to 1991 the authorities attempted to dilute Estonia's culture by moving Russians there. Since independence in 1991 thirty percent of Estonia's population has consisted of unwanted ethnic Russians.

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