MARGARET B. WALLENBERG | WAR, MY MOTHER’S LOVER

WAR, MY MOTHER’S LOVER

i.

The prisoner

of war doctor whispered

stay still

I’ll prove

you’re dead

Gestapo:

Burn her.

ii.

War

her

lover—

watched

over

nothing.

iii.

Audition

for armless

poplars

kneel

on gravel

between

railroad

ties.

iv.

One cold

night

I climbed

under

my mother’s

blanket

she told me:

I rode

a frozen

German

soldier—

he was

my sled.

v.

i packed

my mother's

red shoes—

Spin, I said

turn your bullets

into gold

Margaret,

some lives

aren't worth

living.

Margaret B. Wallenberg received her B.A. from Grinnell College and studied for her M.F.A. at Sarah Lawrence College, where she worked with the poets Thomas Lux and Brooks Haxton. Her recent poetry appears in New Orleans Review, Salt Hill, Confrontation Magazine, The Awakenings Review, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Budapest Stories, an artist book, was exhibited in twenty nonprofit galleries. She lives in Gallup, New Mexico with her husband.