Portside

RED MENACE                                                                               
          for my family

     Now I know why teachers refused
     to pronounce my name.
     They knew.
     In their very simplest syllables,
     they knew--
     Jones, Pierce, Drew--
     Russian rides roughshod,
     a Tartar horseman across
     the tongue, dances
     tranced as the bear
     Siberian shamans become.
     Too many consonants befuddle,
     breed fear in the ear
     of the English-speaking host.
     Even our alphabet's a schism
     intoned by Orthodox priests
     with long white beards, half-pagan,
     signing their backward cross.

     It's in our blood, high
     cheekbones, unbobbed noses,
     the only ones in our small Midwest town--little Ruskies!
     Teachers and classmates called us
     Commies for a joke,
                         so I learned
     "Wait till we take over the world!"
     For that, I was deported
     to the empty hall
     or the principal with shaved eyebrows.     
             What was a Commie to me?
     A bear painted red, sickle
     on his forehead, missiles
     pointed at America's vulnerable heart
     where I, too, lived?

     My father farmed like the Germans
     who surrounded us, like the Swedes
     down the road and the English
     who owned most of those
     flat Michigan fields.

     "Foreigner.  Half-wild." they said,
     when down the runaway road     
     my father ran after our mad bull, Ike,     
     then grabbed the lead rope.
     With a punch solid        
     between the bellowing eyes,
     father stunned Ike docile.
     Just what they feared.

     When they painted Red, Commie Bastard
     on my father's machines,
     it hurt us all.
     An Air Corps hero
     in both theatres
     of the Second World War,
     this man who refused to sign
     McCarthy's loyalty oath
     taught us to salute the flag.
     In school, they tried--       
     I give them that--
     to take the Russian
     out of my head.
     But my cheekbones knew
     and my tongue's cyrillic rhythms
     and my heart
     with its rebellious beat.

     Movies were the final straw--
     films clicking like locusts
     through the afternoon
     doze of history class, listing
     the dangers of becoming a Red. 
     Your family would be stoned, your father
     locked up, your mother
     sent to die in a psychiatric ward.
     Every time, the children shamed.
     At the sorry end of the show, Commie kids
     stood alone, orphaned
     with the Star Spangled Banner
     snapping over their heads.

     I was no Red, no Commie
     but I loved borscht, Tolstoy
     and the Bolshoi ballet,
     adored the Slavic way
     Grandma rolled her r's,
     her Oriental eyes       
     and Indian face.

     After all these years        
     it's clear what it was
     those teachers couldn't name--      
     not just the consonants
     but the roots,
           the skin drums,
     feathers hung
           from the horse's manes,
     the gypsy gait
           of the troika over snow,
     icon candles
           dripping and thick,
     the longing for the sky
           wide above the Steppes.

     I forgive them, forgive them all.
     They didn't think but to accuse
     what is oldest in us.
     I give them back
     their colonial history
     and Republican votes,
     their medium-range words against fear.
     They will never learn
     to pronounce our allegiance
     to what survives,
                      a wilderness of passion
     thicker than the veneer of a few hundred years
     charging our blood
          red and free.

This poem first appeared in Parnassus Review, then in Blood Flower, Wings
    Press, San Antonio, Texas, 2015,

Political activist and wilderness advocate, Pam Uschuk has howled out six books of poems, including CRAZY LOVE, winner of a 2010 American Book Award, and WILD IN THE PLAZA OF MEMORY.  Her new collection is BLOOD FLOWER.
Uschuk has been awarded the 2011 War Poetry Prize from WINNING WRITERS, 2010 New Millenium Poetry Prize, 2010 Best of the Web, the Struga International Poetry Prize (for a theme poem), the Dorothy Daniels Writing Award from the National League of American PEN Women, the King’s English Poetry Prize and prizes from Ascent, Iris, and AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL.  Editor-In-Chief of CUTTHROAT, A JOURNAL OF THE ARTS, Uschuk lives in Bayfield, Colorado.   www.pamelauschuk.com and www.cutthroatmag.com