Another Year, Marla

-on the second anniversary of the death of Marla Ruzicka,
an American aid worker killed in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq on April 16th, 2005.
Marla founded Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) in 2003. 

Each day of this war the body count
passes anonymous as an odometer tick.

We kick the tires, we turn the page.

Upstairs where my books breathe the article
that announced your death and life to me
sits clipped (wide Rolling Stone paper halved
and halved again) stirring like a fever dream
in my bookcase.

Marla, it’s another year for the sand of this war
to overrun the graves, fill in the craters, the details.

Three Poems – Adam Grabowski

 
“And I'll Love You Forever”
		-a bookstore in Western Mass.

You left and took the city with you
went out for cigarettes and became smoke.

And so to stay both more lonely and less lonely 
I went inside the used bookstore to live with 
the broken-spined, the ditched classics, and 
drug money first editions, books who'd burn apart 
if they'd just be held.

Goldenrod and suicidal, a wan line pulls me through
the stacks, has my hands in Leaves of Grass, 1855.

The cover catches my thumb and

2/11/89
    Janice,
    Happy 24th Birthday!  Just want to say
you're a very beautiful person and you are
very special to me.  I hope you enjoy this book.
I love you Janice.
			Frank