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
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