Selections from FIND WHAT ISN’T MISSING (2021),
Copyright Silver Bow Publishing and Author

“The Future as Artifact”

              For Agnieszka and Piotr

Conductor’s score of Chopin’s first piano concerto
acquired last year from anonymity,
a Ghetto map inside the front cover

and a glassed-in photomania of skeletons,
their helter-skelter in the Babi Yar underbrush.
Everyone says, “terrible ̶— terrible”

Stone angels agree, and the museum in Riga
confirms black and white stutter-steps
of the videos — the year, the time it took

The Führer fingering mustache and heart
and raking his hair to the left side.
Stalin forward, rising from his chair

hand on chest. All others stand with him.
You must have heard of these artifacts
the curator whispers as someone stops

behind us. They came as gifts from elsewhere,
and once here it’s as if they came alive,
as if they’ve known every turn of the way back