Martha Jackson Kaplan
Martha Jackson Kaplan is a Pushcart nominated poet and flash fiction writer who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She has a passion for history, a sense of place, and language itself. She has published both in print and online and has won awards from Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. You can find her flash fiction at Bending Genres II, an essay in Bramble V (online and in print), and is thrilled to be published again with Unlikely Stories Mark V. More about her can be found at MarthaKaplanPoet.com.
They won't say: how did the snow lie on the streets?
But: why did the lie so beguile?
They won't ask: how loud were the feet on concrete?
But: how did the poison taste when imbibed?
of borrowed streets of silent
daughters voyaging toward
homes filled with dust and
detritus and grime lacking
wind eyes to air their there.
It is true what the priest discovered. I have heard others tell of it. The bones of Jews have been ground into the road to the green cemetery tended for the SS graves.
“I don’t care about your miserable shit life!”
A punch in the arm to me and she was spinning,
eyes flashing, body flouncing, door slammin’
pure D love a pass/fail stompin’ up the stairs,
