Leo Yankevich Poems

Mother tends to blooms as she has done
for as long as I am able to recall.
She stands, supported by prosthetic knees,
the heat of August heavy on her brow.
...

(Those Who Would Dare Speak the Truth)

Through iron bars and sooty glass,
you see a square of muddy snow,
...

(Ekaterinburg, Russia,17 July 1918)

His mouth agape, as though still asking questions,
the Tsar lies at the end of his long reign.
...

When cathedral bells toll through the morning
and sunlight touches steeples with its glare,
and arrows on the town hall clock stop turning,
you will find him on the market square,
...

You hear the bell, the sun upon your shoulders
like a spilt bag of gold, the street awash
with piss and lager as the hated soldiers
...

Visionary underneath his pain,
he lies there, staring blankly at my mother,
cancer spread from his liver to his brain.
She tries to tell him all the latest news,
...

For a moment as brief and long as eternity
he sees what the blind man sees in the blink of an eye:
...

His pockets full of poems, fingers stained
from packs of Camels, green eyes wet from tears,
Draza Bregovich looks from the plane,
forgetting where he’d lived for twenty years.
...

Better than the burn of booze
when Jack Frost penetrates your bone
is the cheap skid-row wine you use
to light the day when you're alone.
...

1) Adam

He’d pray if he knew how,
but his brain at this stage
...