Poem by Mark Frazier

Like Moses for greatness. Like Juden for a Jewish shop owner. The gold star in a family’s window to honor the sacrifice of their brave son. Sheep or goat’s blood smeared above doors in the Old Testament so the Angel of Death passed by. The large “X” on the diseased elms of my youth. I remember standing by our tree destined to be destroyed. I, too, wanted to disappear. I leaned against its doomed bark listening to the sound of a bird’s lonely warbling. I, too wanted to sing. Now every time I hear this bird trill I feel abandoned and alone. I think about an origami bird I once saw unfolding and unfolding to reveal the creases that made the bird disappear. A psychic told me I was “one of the watched ones.” Was it by one of the guardian angels the nuns spoke of? I wanted to believe they would not mark our house, or to believe they would, for what went on in it, like paint sploshed on doors where someone has the plague.