POETRY, PROSE, AND POLITICS

Fiction, serious reality, and at times their interaction.

BABA, TELL ME ANOTHER STORY

When I was a little boy,

I was afraid of the dark.

Baba sat at my bedside

and told me bed-time stories

of events in the old country,

how Zeyda’s heavy coat

saved his back from an axe

during a pogrom in Kiev

after Stolypin’s assassination,

of Kiev opera stories

where Baba’s friend worked

and would let her in

to sit free in an empty seat,

Rigoletto, La Juive

with Baba’s take on each story.

“Baba, tell me another story.”

And so it would go on

until I would fall asleep.