Liz Marlow

Rivka Survives


​Skvira, Ukraine Pogrom, 1919

Purple swirls on my breasts, belly—crystal balls—reveal my fate.  Not all that grows is made from
love—when a bee pollinates a sunflower, it is to take the nectar. He handled my skin like an aphid
on a leaf while I clawed at him like a dormouse burrowing for the winter. Someone, a sister, might
have asked, What was your first time like?  Hands  ungloved during  snowfall, scabs peeled away,
what should remain concealed was exposed.  A face should be bare, but he veiled mine—pulling
up my skirt.  Were  his eyes the color of dead grass?  Was  his  mouth  jagged, a  cemetery full  of
crumbling tombstones?  His breath smelled of vodka. Mine  smelled of borscht. His words—a dull
knife.  My words—crouching  in  an  empty well.  His  skin  was of  metal.  Mine was  of  dust. What
does the past look like when time is a shovel?  What does night look like without the sky? How do
I flee without a map? The Earth is of a magnetic field. The ocean is of an undertow.

Sara and the Fox


​Treblinka, 1942

I remember looking at my reflection
              in a frozen pond, seeing my
future crack. In the distance,
              a nebula consumes a house;
kindling and logs pop
                           stars in fog. In the corner
of my eye, a fox faces
              north, listens for prey, dives
into the snow, then clenches
              a squealing mouse in his jaws.

He faces north. I am the mouse
              he hunts through haze. His
paws—coarse like a brick
             wall, like lava after it cools,
like bones left in
             ashes—grab at me. At once,
he creates and smolders
             my fire, so I spit cinders
rather than the word, No.
             If I could pick myself up,
piece together a full book
             of matches, I would become
an inferno. I would burn
             it all down. Watch me.


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Liz Marlow’s debut chapbook, They Become Stars, was the winner of the 2019 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. Additionally, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, Mud Season Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Yemassee, and elsewhere.