On a Day of Remembrance
By Jed Myers
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2022
Let’s remember how they thought
they were finally cleaning things up.
Taking care of the rodent problem.
Not strange. The same way
we had the man spray downstairs
when moths had invaded the carpet.
You know how your scalp will itch
when you hear there are lice. Let’s
remember this, inheritance meant
to make our skin crawl at the chance
of a spider, a scorpion, ants.
Older than ancient. Ancestral.
Remembrance? Let it spread across
every checkpoint and wired wall,
to stay all our swatting hands.
Jed Myers is author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), and four chapbooks, including Dark’s Channels (Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Award) and Love’s Test (winner, Grayson Books Chapbook Contest). Recognitions include Southern Indiana Review’s Editors’ Award, the Prime Number Magazine Award, and The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Prize. His poems can be found in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, RHINO, The Greensboro Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. He lives in Seattle and is Poetry Editor for Bracken.
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