Dachniki by Rachel Stempel
Associate editor Lis Pérez on today’s bonus poem: City-sick. Wood Rot. Grandmothers. Rachel Stempel depicts how traditional knowledge holds a precarious position under negligent political powers, reflecting the perspectives of all of those (us) living under imperial aggression. “Dachniki” captures the urgency we need in order to start fighting.
Dachniki
We fell in love with our ailments,
our diagnoses of city-sick. How good
it felt to soak in the wet wood rot of
yesteryear’s izba. Maybe our grandmothers
knew best, though their warnings, heavy
like honey and just
as sweet, sounded silly to our bloc
ears. But when Ukraine ran
out of dandelions, there we were, eye-level
with the shotgun.
Rachel Stempel is a genderqueer Ukrainian-Jewish poet and PhD student in English literature at Binghamton University. They are the author of the chapbook Interiors (Foundlings Press 2022), and their work has recently appeared in Penn Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, and Hobart. They currently live in New York with their rabbit, Diego.
