Poetry
Finding Nomadic Refuge
When my mother lived in Prague
and I lived in her
my father collected papers
for our immigration
and I entered the refuge of a refugee
in a permanent divorce
from other tongues
like Czechoslovak
and Hungarian,
distracted by proof of concept
shaking hands with the air.
When a single tobacco ash
fell on my index finger
looking like a black mayfly
I became
one more refugee as a victim
in a paradigm
absorbed and reproduced
in a future
of refugees and children of refugees
themselves and their stories
lost within myself
yes and no
facing the inevitable end.
Michael Salcman
Michael Salcman is a former chairman of neurosurgery, University of Maryland, and president of The Contemporary Museum, a child of the Holocaust and a survivor of polio. Poems in Blue Unicorn, Hopkins Review, Hudson Review, New Letters, Notre Dame Review, Raritan and Smartish Pace. Books include Clock Made of Confetti (nominated The Poets' Prize), The Enemy of Good is Better, Poetry in Medicine: classic and contemporary medical poems, A Prague Spring (Sinclair Poetry Prize), Shades & Graces (Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize), Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems, and Crossing the Tape (2024).