ISSUE 7

Nathan McDowell 

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A First-Generation American Elegy

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              I wander from room to room looking for an accent to trust, waiting 
for their oppressive soft tones to fade. My friends hear your 
“не надо, мама” on the phone with Grandma, think 
              your voice too loud. They only know magazines, not mothers.

Jake and I grew up in the liminal — between your country and theirs,
              listening to Mase on dense carpet, polygons on the television,
              shelves filled with fermenting creatures, cabbage, and brick, and salt, and
sweat my friends couldn’t understand. Our bookshelves filled with words

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              you never taught me, except to see them as a mirror—
the Cyrillic alphabet an architecture, ornate door I could not open.
What did you make? Pot of borscht—stove ventilating, sweet dill
              and beet of earth, marrow. I begged you for Lunchables.

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The plastic sheen so kind, so soft I could’ve never guessed it would choke me— 
              What did existential crises over Kraft singles look like to you?
              What was the flavor of that loneliness—knowing you made something new?
What were you given? Death, a bed at Trinity down the road

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              from Rock Island High? A nurse calling you my grandmother? 
Nausea becoming a new secret? Your kitchen unfinished, Leo beating you to it?
We were in paradise when your body gave you a death sentence.
              These things aren’t supposed to happen to the brave, the refugee,

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invulnerable, my mother. This is the wrong end of the story.
              These spiteful memories can’t be the sum, 
              so I build a bridge from these places you were
to this other one still moving. But this evolving conversation 

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              I have with the world keeps cutting a schism in what holds me to you,
it is being sequestered—severed. I would kill for just a drop,
for you to disapprove of something, the garden Grace drew 
              on my arm. To curse at me for cursing too much.
   
I miss you calling my best friend bitch as much as I miss 
              the buffer between me and the end. Whatever I cling
              to slips through my fingers: your old office supplies: 
the gator-toothed staple removers, quickly jotted phone numbers, things you couldn’t take

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              I locked away for safekeeping. But the shawls and furs that should have been
loved are stained. The kefir grains and your other good molds
are growing bad mold. Holding on to the pain was more pain than holding.
              I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time being sad when you were still here.

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As if I needed practice. As if it would always be a choice. I wish the memories
              I had of you had more tall swirling towers, more samovars, less frayed
              carpet and stolen purses. More mushrooms nestled under silver birch sentinels,
more studying for a Bar Mitzvah and less Final Fantasy.

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              More smoking Virginia Slims, listening to Toni Braxton, to Leonard,
to Pierce. Less not calling you from college. More waterfalls in Kauai,
Fewer tumors spreading to the bone. More sneaking into Miami nightclubs
              but maybe less frosted tips. More Chinese buffets, endless crab legs, even more 

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unleavened Burger King. More Sting playing in the woods 
              outside Jurmala, fewer hours brooding, listening to Prozzak. 
              More of Grandma’s and your bold consonants sparking 
with furious love, more birch whips and nude joy,

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              less shame, less guilt. More Soviet Bloc athletes at our house
pouring vodka for my friends and grapes and black bread,
and blini, pickles, tubs of caviar, sour cream jar leftovers,
              and more Georgian barbecue, and more Georgian wine, and more.

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