The Friday Poem: ‘Heirloom’ by Carrie Rudzinski
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A new poem by performance poet Carrie Rudzinski.
Heirloom
I.
No one knows the last names of my great-grandmothers / their own families of origin lost in the record keeping / Lillian / Julia / Gertrude / little womyn waiting for their names to be called / even if we knew their last names they would still belong to their fathers / like a dowry / a piece of land / a country they fled from. My grandmother left Ukraine with her name and a suitcase / Irene Stachiw.
II.
My babcia was only half a memory scarred like a bomb / bodies for teeth / hatred for bones / a black and white photograph no one has ever seen / she was all the parts of a war no one wants to talk about / a girl in a 90-year-old body rambling about the dead / sometimes I think about my grandmother arriving at the mouth of Ellis Island alone / 18 years old / thin as a rail / only able to speak Ukrainian / married to a stranger.
III.
L’viv is on fire again / they are bombing Babcia’s house again / Babcia’s people are fleeing again / my babcia fled / my babcia / girl on fire / survivor of unspeakable things.
IV.
My grandmother / skin soft clammy and blue / breaks communion / kisses me / she says all of my friends are dead now and I wonder if life is a punishment / or an answer to the flock of prayers she must have screamed as a child / we are waiting for her to die / we want her to have peace / or to be a memory we can trim the edges of. My grandmother tells my father she does not love him / and we hold our breath until he laughs / we all know Babcia is an 11-year-old barefoot child cutting out her own tongue so it cannot be taken from her.
V.
Tell us the story / rip us from the Earth / Ukraine rich as dirt / swallow the ash / store it in your belly / the sky is a scar / and we have not forgotten / Babcia hated Stalin more than Hitler / don’t ever forget / don’t ever forget / glory to Ukraine.
The Friday Poem is edited by Chris Tse. Submissions are currently closed.
Carrie Rudzinski
Carrie Rudzinski has performed her poetry over the past 17 years in six countries and been featured in Bustle, HuffPost and Teen Vogue. She is a founder of JAFA Poetry Slam and co-editor of Rapture: An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP, 2023). Carrie is also the co-creator of three poetry theatre shows - How We Survive (2019), The Bitching Hour (2023), and Hysterical (2022) - the latter of which won Best New Aotearoa Play at the Wellington Theatre Awards and Outstanding Performance Poetry at Auckland Fringe Festival.
