DEAD MOTHER TOUR:
Moscow, 1983
She is 19 & drunk on Dostoevsky when she dreams
of walking the Volga. There will be snow dusting
the Kremlin & she will be dressed in black. The man,
slick with Marx & Mayakovsky, will take her hand as
they stand in line to see Lenin pickled in his tomb. Shoot
vodka with some men he knows. Later, in the eye
of night he will undress her, & as she thrills to the trill
of Pushkin pouring from his throat, she will catch
the reflection of her own eyes sparking in the moon of his
& believe this is all there is to love. Perhaps, if the mother
were alive, she might warn the daughter that the river,
the moon, are easy. It is the waking that is hard—
the man now distant at the edge of the bed & & you, left
with your own skin, stark & naked beneath the knife of day.
DEAD MOTHER TOUR:
Leningrad, 1983
after Ocean Vuong
What I need you to see is not
how Spring is stilled
by the click of the shutter—
the inadequacy of the girl’s
neckline torn like Alex
from Flashdance to reveal
her motherless throat,
or the two men—
strangers—propped
like exclamation marks
beside her on a park
bench piercing
the horizon
with their gaze,
but the hands holding
the camera that are
my father’s hands,
& the face squinting
into the sun that is
his daughter, his flesh.
Like all photographs
this one fails to tell
the story. Like where
the girl is thinking
of yet another man—
their tour guide sworn
to be their shepherd
in this foreign land.
How, not yet fluent
in the tricks of the moon,
she’d mistaken the flash
of conquest in his eyes
for love.
Or how,
when the trip
draws to a close,
the father
will slip
a bill
into his
pocket—
a tip
for showing
them all
a good time,
& the girl
will be too
ashamed
to stop him.
Rebe Huntman's poems, essays, and stories appear in such places as The Southern Review, CRAFT Literary, Ninth Letter, South Loop Review, Tampa Review, Quarter After Eight, Sonora Review, Juked, and The Pinch. The recipient of an Ohio Individual Excellence Award, she holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from The Ohio State University. Her debut memoir, My Mother in Havana, is forthcoming from Monkfish Books. Find her at rebehuntman.com and on Instagram @rebehuntman.