Upon Finding Father's Application for Reparations
by Clarissa Jakobsons
The memory of his funeral reawakens.
A man who survived concentration camps
and the Gulag, he lived to heal others, but now...
My sister called: Come tomorrow to the Bedford
Funeral Home at 1 PM. Father is dead.
My children stayed home. I arrived
with a neighbor’s Bible glued to my right
hand, read verses clearly marked to my mother,
sister, her husband, and a Catholic priest.
His eyes peered into me with disbelief.
Then his own erratic, spoken phrases
stumbled across the room.
Mother hovered over father’s body
and cried: A doctor in a cardboard box!
I thought, Who put him there?
Then she commanded, Follow me.
This child obeyed without question,
stepped down steep, short, cold steps.
Sister leaned on her husband’s
shoulder, while a banister supported
my weak, confused body as if stuffed
in concrete, without air. A Gulag.
From nowhere his body appeared,
slid through a metal door, the latch
clicked, separating our bodies forever.
I clenched that Bible. Someone flipped
a button, flames sparked through the peephole
enveloped every spirit. The ground shook
bones. Motionless, electrified. Mother said,
We must be sure these are his ashes.
Walking to the car, smoke filtered the skies
inflaming breath, the odor of burnt flesh
lingered on my skin. Looking to the sky,
a towering chimney streamed a train of darkness
winding toward The Last Stronghold.
A man who survived concentration camps
and the Gulag, he lived to heal others, but now...
My sister called: Come tomorrow to the Bedford
Funeral Home at 1 PM. Father is dead.
My children stayed home. I arrived
with a neighbor’s Bible glued to my right
hand, read verses clearly marked to my mother,
sister, her husband, and a Catholic priest.
His eyes peered into me with disbelief.
Then his own erratic, spoken phrases
stumbled across the room.
Mother hovered over father’s body
and cried: A doctor in a cardboard box!
I thought, Who put him there?
Then she commanded, Follow me.
This child obeyed without question,
stepped down steep, short, cold steps.
Sister leaned on her husband’s
shoulder, while a banister supported
my weak, confused body as if stuffed
in concrete, without air. A Gulag.
From nowhere his body appeared,
slid through a metal door, the latch
clicked, separating our bodies forever.
I clenched that Bible. Someone flipped
a button, flames sparked through the peephole
enveloped every spirit. The ground shook
bones. Motionless, electrified. Mother said,
We must be sure these are his ashes.
Walking to the car, smoke filtered the skies
inflaming breath, the odor of burnt flesh
lingered on my skin. Looking to the sky,
a towering chimney streamed a train of darkness
winding toward The Last Stronghold.
Clarissa Jakobsons instructs at Cuyahoga Community College and often weaves one-of-a-kind artist books, exhibited internationally, including the Cleveland Museum of Art Ingalls Library. She combines artist books with her poems and paintings. Sample publications include: Glint Literary Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, The Lake, and more. She was twice featured at the Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore in Paris, and she enjoyed a residency at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts. She writes, “Don’t be surprised to see my inner artist kicking sandcastles, climbing Mount Diablo, painting Provincetown dunes, or igniting Tai Chi-haiku under an Ohio crescent moon.”