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Prababushka

By Tanya Paperny
click on a live stream
of a memorial event
to commemorate victims
of Soviet terror

watch from your American
apartment computer desk
as hundreds of people
in Moscow’s nighttime dark

line up to read
at the annual recitation of names
the event set to end
within the hour

so you want to shout at the computer
MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER
TATIANA IVANOVNA SHATALOVA-RABINOVICH
MARCH 7, 1938

but you’re not mic’d
nor are you in line for the microphone
you’re watching from the country your family fled to
where it’s late afternoon

so instead you listen
to the names of the dead
and the editorializing
of their descendants:

moi ded — my grandpa
moi otets — my father
moi papa — my dad
ikh doch’ — their daughter

tridtsat’ let — thirty years old
tridtsat’ let — thirty years old
vsego odin god starshe menia —
only one year older than me

gde pokhoronennyi i gde pogibli
ne izvestno —
where they’re buried and where they died
we don’t know

liubim, pomnim
ne prostim nekogda —
we love, we remember
we’ll never forgive

MY POMNIM —
WE REMEMBER
ETO NADO POMNIT' —
THIS MUST BE REMEMBERED

and then — and then —
and then the camera
pans down the line
snaking through Lyubyanka Square

people huddled
against the frigid rain
heating their hands over candles
and a single-flame heating lamp

and suddenly you see
none other
than your cousin
Alesha Paperny

he’s in the queue
up next to read
and it falls into place
SYNCHRONICITY

the past is present
and you’re watching your relative
halfway around the world
appear pixelated on a screen before you

watching live
from your cozy home office
from a seven-second broadcast delay
from eight time zones over

you wonder to yourself
if the live telecast
is also a way to protect the living
the participants —

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING
and so am I.

Added: Wednesday, June 6, 2018 / Used with permission.

Tanya Paperny is a writer, artist, editor, and educator living in Washington, DC. The child of Soviet Jewish refugees, her poetry and nonfiction deal with the aftermath of atrocity. Tanya's work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Washington City Paper, The Literary Review, VICE, PANK, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pacific Standard, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Vermont Studio Center, and OMI International Arts Center, and she is at work on a collection about violence, trauma, and resilience. Please visit her on Twitter and her website.

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