Plymouth Magazine-Summer26-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 28
a map of Chicago’s elevated train from 1939,
his war letters to my grandmother,
and a neatly folded woolen flag.
My mother had told us it was there,
had brought it out, in fact,
when we were studying the war in school,
but still, it was a shock
to see the blood red banner
with its yellowed center circle
and careful black stitching
calling out in the quiet basement
like a demon unfurled.
Flags
By Dave Murrin-von Ebers, written August 20, 2017 in response
to Charlottesville
In the basement of my mother’s house
in a tiled room to the right of the stairs
a wet bar sits under a union flag
painted on the ceiling.
The bar is home to little more
than a few bottles of wine and the mold
their corks have accumulated
and a half-dozen moving boxes
stuffed with forgettables.
Most of these boxes have idled
on the bar and in its underside
for the better part of two decades,
having made the trek
from my grandmother’s basement in Ohio
like my mother before them.
Somewhere in that span
my sister painted over the flag on the ceiling
a single coat of white
so that the faded
stars and stripes still bleed
through.
One night
we clunked our way down the stairs
to the basement,
my mother looking to unload
some of the stuff that life in America accumulates.
We dug into unmarked boxes
with the curiosity of a couple of glasses of wine.
In one we found china and serving-ware
that hadn’t seen the light of day
since my mother’s wedding,
in another we discovered reminders
of my grandfather:
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My grandfather took this flag
from a liberated camp
where men and women and children
were sent to die.
I imagined the scattering gravel under his feet
as he walked the train tracks into camp
under an ashen sky;
could see the pleading look of emaciated prisoners
as grey and sullen as the heavens above
as they awaited emancipation.
Now. In America.
Men with tanned skin brandish this flag
with patriotic pride,
screaming spittle running down
unkempt beards—
a surreal self-portrait of America
and her sordid racial history come to life
on the canvas of cable television.
My grandfathers and your grandfathers,
no more than boys,
had the courage to risk their lives
and in doing so risk my life,
risk your life,
risk our mothers’ lives,
and you dare walk the street
with the flag of genocide?
If this country ever roars again,
may it unleash its fury
into that fearful, ghostly face of hate.
Back in the basement
with the echoes of silence in our ears—
years before the riot in Charlottesville,
years before a Nazi-sympathizer
took the oath of office,
putting a muzzle on the mouth
of a once mighty country—
we stood and contemplated what it meant
to take that flag
and to bury it again
in a box of memories.
