Miss Mangelli’s Antennaed Pest Problem by Charles J. March III

YANY MOONS after the Mexican Revolution, just inshore from a harbor in California where roaches are in the swim alongside anglers, and where many of the revolutionaries’ ancestors work for burghers who are whiter than a bakery cockroach—a hornet’s nest was in the wings, as a toothsome woman was unknowingly harboring something less smashing. ...click here to READ MORE

at night and often times
during the day I share
a bunk bed with a sulky skeleton.

The boy prefers the fields before they’re cut –
likes the lick of grass along his small gut,
how the blades make tongues
of themselves, the dew their spit and dribble.
When the turf is slashed I feel the absence
for him, see in his infant face
the loss of tickles, touches from nature.

Act I A barren scene: furry things
like bodies flat on a battlefield.
Baby coos, strapped in a chair,
beholding a performance like a queen:
Father hides his face
behind his trembling hands,
in the hope she’ll be amused.
Baby claps a stuttered applause,
still learning the language of arms.

23 December 1943
Gestapo Headquarters on Szucha Avenue, Warsaw, Poland

An armed Nazi guard walks me through a maze of corridors into a small room. I detect a whiff of bleach that fails to mask the ominous smell of blood. Harsh light pours through the window.

The guard pushes me toward a chair with spots of brown paint peeling off across from a desk cluttered by issues of Wehrmacht magazine, a black telephone handset, and a lamp. A faded picture of Hitler on a wall gives a sickening sensation in my stomach.

Soon I hear the heavy click-click of heels on the corridor floor. The door swings wide open to reveal a fair-haired man in a gray uniform with a diamond-shaped SD insignia, accompanied by a severe-looking brunette. He pays no attention to me as he walks around the desk and settles in the large wooden chair. His female companion takes a seat at a small table with a typewriter.