Murderers
“Meditate che questo è stato.”
—Primo Levi
Let’s make a deal: for every time you ask me
how ‘my people’ could do such a thing—
bomb an apartment building, starve innocent
children, shoot journalists—I get to ask
how ‘your people’ were able to herd ‘my people’
for centuries into ghettos, cattle cars,
ovens. We can make it a game of poker
between God and the Devil, only
they’re wearing disguises so no one knows
who’s who, as if it made any difference
anyway, God or Devil, Israeli or Palestinian,
gentile or Jew. We’ll play this psychotic hand
with a stacked deck for the rest of our lives
and then our children’s lives, our children’s children’s,
tweaking the muscles in our poker faces
until the flesh tightens into a mask
and tongues become poisonous little vipers
concealed behind our teeth, stretched
to the thin shield of a smile, perfectly white
and malicious.
*
Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.
This poem was written in response to the following news story.
Thank you for this poem
Wow! I’m holding on to this one.
My thoughts exactly. Thanks to the author for expressing them succinctly,
Of war and hatred, there is no making sense in the end. Thank you Mark for publishing it.
Oh my, this certainly sums it up. Hits you in the guts kind of poem. Really good.
This is why I need poetry. Thank you Marc and thank you One Art. And thanks for the link to the news story.
Thank you for this poem.
I think it had to be said, and Marc is the right poet to do so. Thank you both for your courage.