Last Train To Auschwitz Contest
Ashes to Ashes
Smoke
rises in the distance.
The boxcar
rocks,
rocks,
rocks;
stones
are placed along the ties.
Were they placed by Chance
or left
as gently as Kaddish.
I lift my hands in the darkness;
the light of the knothole
lights the tips of my fingers like Shabbat candles,
and I cover my eyes.
I can smell them,
the names
put in the furnace.
Silence screams out of the smoke stacks
as vowels burn away
as consonants try to escape the fire, flee
up the concrete throat and out
into the sky
escaping the camp disguised in grey coats of ash,
at last,
as winter covers the mirrors
of the lakes with ice.
Contest: Last Train to Auschwitz
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
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