The Lucky Ones

Your great-grandfather told me that he walked from Poland to the coast of France

to escape the Nazi’s,

a fantastical story especially for you,

a girl who summers on a Caribbean island, where walking to the coast just means a day’s sweat,

and Poland is the name of a bottled water so sweet that you can imagine drinking it now under the hot Dominican sun

where your father’s ancestors were Tainos and African slaves, and the ones who weren’t worked to death

walked everywhere,

and only recently have the roads been paved, mostly for the tourists,

but all the rivers have dried up and there isn’t rain enough to swim in anything sweet;

but there’s still the sea and the ocean on the other side where the resorts are,

where dark-skinned workers rake in the seaweed so that it’s clean

for folks who come from other places to look out on the horizon and say,

I wish I could live here in paradise,

while down the road, in the same Caribbean town,

they put out barrels for the rain to wash their faces and brush their teeth

and their parents tell them about the days when the ocean was so full of fish we didn’t need a line,

when we took the road past la Otra Banda because the highway wasn’t here,

but now that town has dried up, too,

and all the children left and went to the USA

to make a living, and they come back with their chains and their guns,

and the newspapers say

crime is up so there’s no more dancing in the streets at night,

there’s a curfew and all the businesses must close by twelve because in the dark

all dark skins look alike and there are many things to fear,

like the Haitians coming back to this side of the island

and we don’t want them here;

but you have taken a Haitian boyfriend and have tattooed

the Hebrew word for luck on your arm

in the same soft spot

where the Nazi’s burned a number into flesh

if you were one of the lucky ones

who wasn’t

stripped naked

and shot in a ditch

and shoveled over by the next batch.

Karen Levy

2019

All Hail Rosie, the Kindergarten Queen