ecclectica

The Soul Squeezer

by Laurie Block

In Yiddish, n'shamah kvetcher, a girdle.


Every night she's liberated like Europe 
after the war Sophie sighs, once 
for every hook and eye, for the troops 
of bruised flesh and for all uneasy breathers
at loose in the free world.
Her girdle at attention by the bed
succumbs, inch by inch to the pillow
where a feather moves against her upper lip.
Look, she lives, my Baba dreams of horses'
turds steaming like chimneys,
dark factories and ruined cities 
along the refugee road.

In Paris, Chagall faces east  
into the screaming colours 
of the night.  He can't describe 
the hectic, rosy glow of false dawn.
How can he fill the dying canvas  
with cool blue horses and lovestruck guitars
while the one-eyed sirens wail 
through fugitive human smoke?
How can he paint his passion
while others dance in fire?

The frontiers of history shift 
in her hands, possible and alive.
As she bakes bread the dough becomes a map,
Russia rising under her thumb.  Sophie returns 
to her youth, the beauty, talking to Chagall 
every morning over the ghost of a good breakfast,
their words hot as coffee before he zips 
to his canvas, dipping his brush first in her.
He says it's good to hear your voice,
so cold and broken in Canada
that, for the life of her, she can't.

This is her odyssey.  Sophie takes a broom 
to the dust of the Great Depression and to children

stealing apples.  While half the world burns,
she polishes the legs of her unplayed piano,
with spit and rags she calls on her unborn,
children of Chagall.  So many,
hiding under her apron, she sees herself
feeding them like chickens,
a butter yellow cloud scratching at her feet.
How their singsong brings the sun to her.
How she was once the swan that knew
the secret of flight.