Maus

            For Art Spiegleman

I return each day to the Museum of Modern Art

on my lunch hour and read the walls.

My fingers trace the maps of Auschwitz

and Birkenau, counting in units of one thousand 

how many Jews were stuffed in barracks,

and hauled into ovens.

I bend my head before the black and white 

cartoon frames that curve around the room,

and the walls become my Waling Wall.

I pray for poor Mandelbaum 

who must hold his oversized pants 

with one hand, and a shoe

that is too small for his foot

and a spoon for his supper

in the other. I pray for dear Artie

as he leans on his drawing board,

with the bodies of crumpled Jewish

mice at his feet, and the shadows

of Nazi cats posed outside his window.

I pray for Vladek Spiegelman

with his face full and flush like my father’s,

as he stares from his souvenir photo

in a clean camp uniform.

And I pray for his wife Anja

who gives her hard bread away

and starves herself smaller and smaller,

who drags colossal cans of soup

across the dust of Birkenau,

who kills herself years later

after she has survived the war.

Each day after visiting the walls

I walk back to my office.

I walk past the toy soldiers that rise

above the Avenue like Hasidic

men on guard with scraggly black

beards that are yanked by the wind,

and past the Salvation Army Santas

who stand all day in the cold city air

slapping bells across their bellies.