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Barbara Riddle

  • Home
  • Contact
  • Novels
  • Published Nonfiction
  • Poetry
  • Memoir
    • PROLOGUE
    • Who Are These People?
    • Shoes and Gloves for the Young Lady
    • First Prize
    • Looking for A Job
    • The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Floors of Bank Street
    • Semantics
    • Lincoln Continental
    • The Japanese Stallion
    • Art
    • Skunks and Bladders
    • Seahorse Anything
    • Swimming and Shopping
    • Cufflinks, or The Teeth of Gérard Philipe
    • Pool of Kings
    • The Women’s House of Detention
    • The Bathrobe
    • Jewish in My Mind
    • Will The Real Arthur Murray Please Stand Up?
    • Marilyn
    • Wo Bist Du, Fraulein Rheingold?
    • Honor Thy Father
    • September
    • Samples
    • Yurrup
    • Togetherness
    • Surviving the Hotel Marlton
    • My Best Friend Couldn’t Be A Communist
    • Sex and Sinclair Lewis
  • Press
  • About Barbara
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo

Song for a Damaged Man

April 01, 2005

They celebrated Hitler’s birthday, but not yours.

I guess your Czech parents were busier than mine.

It’s not their fault.

But, look- your father’s beer bought you that white horse,

for one whole week-

until the Germans were on the run again. Your thighs

remembered the bony spine

for months.

Meanwhile, I was busy being born

in New York City. For me, the war’s that

photo of the nurse and sailor smooching

in Times Square;

the war to me is you shouting in your sleep.

It’s not your fault.

And I,

I know only that our American horses pull

sleighs in snowy woods, and that our American poets

have promises to keep.

At least that’s what I thought I knew

before I met you.

It’s not my fault.

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