Boy by Maya Pindyck

Someone made the school a plaque
of names. I find the one I wanted

for my never-son: bronze prince
stirring a pond with all his brothers.

My family came here from a country
I am not allowed to visit

even though its spices fill my cabinet.
My other family never made it.

I once walked a field
covering their bodies. Wildflowers

& grasses. Here, the story of a line
of children shot in the schoolyard.

Here, Manek’s hairbrush shop.
What I can’t wrap my head around

is the story of the boy playing ball
by the hole where they hid—

how he ratted them out to a soldier.
I try to imagine how that boy

grew. To love his own
boys, only, playing hide & seek

in the sun? And is that boy’s boy
a boy who now trains to turn

a life lethal, to pull a trigger
out of fear, or rage, or duty?

I don’t know, but I think it’s the same boy
stammering history & now & here—boy

who waves in the night to be seen.

Maya Pindyck’s latest poetry collection, Emoticoncert, was published by Four Way Books in 2016. Raised in Massachusetts and Tel Aviv, she lives in Brooklyn, NY.