February 12, 2009

G.

My sister with her head in the gas oven.

What was going through her head when she died.

What was going through her head when she was alive.

I think the world didn’t make any particular 

Impression on her in forty years.

War hunger cold. Two children, her husband,

A drunk. She loves him, though. He lives

Off her back, off the work she performs quietly,

Like a quiet animal. When he leaves her,

She twice tries to do away with herself.

The third time she was sucessful.

On the gravestone, it says she was alive.



-Kurt Bartsch.