Christina Pacosz has been publishing in little magazines and small presses since the 1970's and has several books of poetry, the most recent, Greatest Hits, 1975-2001,Pudding House, 2002. She is teaching urban youth in Kansas City, Missouri

2- Polish Home

     Jednosci zgoda
     To sila nasza dom
     Polski z jednosz towarzystw*

Sighs carry us through
our sororal search and recovery mission,
this pilgrimage on these historied ulicaj.
Each exhale of our sadness and
Sorrow becomes the name for the breeze
blowing us down:
Kopernick, Gilbert, Otis, John Kronk,
E. Palmer, Charest, McDougal
Memory scattered like trash
before an elegiac wind.

Here our mother
witnessed pink petals scattering, foreshadowing
her cruel, elemental shattering.
There the grandfather we never knew,
a hit and run in the rainy dark,
dead on arrival at Receiving. We are still grieving.
Nothing remains but ash and ruin.

A black man on a bicycle stops,
leans in the car window and reassures us
That’s the house, you got the right one!
When he realizes we are not undercover
for Detroit PD, or The Detroit News, he grins.
We explain we are not
photographing the crack house just past
the vacant lot where they lived
but the mute, eloquent grass.
That was a long time ago he offers.
We smile and nod
in recognition
of a mutual loss.

Dom Polski
where they fell in love that New Year’s Eve
during World War II -
abandoned now -
though the cornerstone pledges this will not be so.

*Carved into the cornerstone of the abandoned Dom Polski hall on Junction, near Michigan Avenue in Detroit.
“Reconciliation of unity is our strength. Polish Home of United Associations.”
Unity can be a force for reconciliation, we are discovering,
possibly for the first time.
You behind the wheel of the rental car,
me with the map of the city - our beloved, in ruins –
spread out on my lap like a child
we are attempting to resuscitate.
At Mt. Olivet Cemetery we tear at grass
grown over the marble slab
until their names

Mary and Anthony Kostrzewski: Busia Dziadzia
are easily read
though our labor makes it painfully obvious
no one does.

Fingernails black with dirt
we scrub our hands at a nearby spigot
then roam a grassy section for the unmarked baby’s grave -
this little one conceived and born too early
and dead too soon
and no money for a headstone -
listening for a small voice calling
“Here, sisters, here!”

Only a flock of silent crows.
A solitary Monarch.
The constant roar of planes from the City Airport.
And each other.
You kneel and pray.
I collapse on the grass.

Done in by the miles we’ve traveled, the miles to go.

Unsure of what we want we are ready
for whatever crosses our path:
chicory blooming by the roadside, the belch of exhaust,
sunlight filtered through the leaves of old trees.
Drivers shouting Stupid bitch, learn how to drive!
She never did, we recall, but walked the streets in all seasons
waiting for buses:
Conant, Warren, Jefferson, Woodward, Tireman, Joy.


3- Father’s Day, 1999, St. Hedwig Church, Junction Avenue

Old Spice
what we always gave him for Christmas and birthdays
scents the air, while the pelican symbolizing Christ
feeds its young.
St. Hedwig stands at the center of the marble-tiered altar
arms out, palms up. This saint I discover later
is honored on October 16, the date Papa died
surrounded by flames. Mama died December 27,
the same date her firstborn was buried
in that grave we can never find.
Synchronicities are embedded in their stories
like the lead in galena our grandfather, Antoni,
shoveled in Leadwood, Missouri

until Amerika ran him and our kind out.
Communicants in an unwritten liturgy
we must learn to feed ourselves.


 4-Our Lady Help of Christians

Where she graduated from eighth grade.
And years later went to a Sodality dance. The aftermath
reverberating
like a horrible war, an awful crime - rape - alive
and doing damage in our lives, our souls hostage
to her pain and anguish.
Almost 70 years to the day she clutched her diploma
we stand on the same spot and gape at the statues
of St. Theresa, the Little Flower, and of Mary, the mother.
These icons of her piety
mute plaster and stone witnesses.

Yes, we remember her, Sophia Anna, so in love with God,
lighting the candles at our feet, kneeling, bowing her head
heavy from shame and sorrow, on fire with grief,
rebelling against all of it.

Sister Fabiana, our sweet, serene guide
has embraced this place
this church, the same parish for almost as many decades.
“I thought I was something then, joining the Falcons
wearing gym shorts whenever I found an excuse.
To think - now- I have done this - I would have hooted
with scorn at the thought. But here I am. Proof.”


5-Of the Mystery of Faith, the Strength of Belief

On Belle Isle a half-dozen or more
of the elu-sive miniature deer
brown coats sleek in the last rays of the sun
crop grass by the road near the golf course.
So trusting
despite the many cars.
Two albino deer gleam
like the iridescent interior of mussel shells
that once thrived in the nearby river.
Their coloring a testament to the genetic health of the herd.

Memory looms
like a freighter maneuvering the narrow channel.
Building a bridge to the past, it’s called.
Being a witness to a living continuum.
The banal phrase life goes on alive in that fisherman
casting his line,
the union retiree picnicking.
The small green fists of bananas ripening
beneath conservatory glass. Cactus blooming.
The bells of the carillon ringing out the hour.
A little girl screaming
in the restroom, enjoying the echo
of her voice.

We’re looking up! Dolores says, each of us
in our separate lives
turning our gaze skyward
because the view at ground level - ground zero -
is not always good to see.
Our mothers, Italian, Polish,
packed hampers of food
and children in tow - us - hopped the bus
to this island of respite
and cool breezes.

Scores of Canada geese
raise goslings on the island now.
No forage farther north
so a new generation
begins here. A necessary twist
to an ancient story.

Not far from where I sit
Emma Goldman’s suitcase waits
in Federico’s basement.
Who will pick it up
and travel to a new world?

The Map Is Not the Territory

            for Ewa Cholody Pacosz Miazga
           November 18, 1887 – August 16, 1971

The old neighborhood
around Junction and Livernois
not far from Michigan Avenue.
Then and now
someone’s cherished bit
of stare kraju.

Near the bridge to Canada
where just this week
three men painting the span
were tossed by the wind
into the river.
One of them drowned
before he could be
rescued.

Visiting Busia Ewa
was like being inside
a fairy tale
before all the miracles happen.
A poor woman, twice widowed
she lived alone on Otis
in a two-room, cold-water flat
with a shared bathroom
down the hall.

At night she took
the Michigan Avenue bus downtown
and cleaned the Guardian Building.
Fancy art deco
nicknamed the “Cathedral of Finance.”
Built in 1929
the year she came to America
from Modliborzyce
for a second time.

An Aztec theme.
Almost 2 million red bricks.
72 caissons sunk through hardpan to bedrock
120 feet below.
Large stone carvings outside,
one holding a sword, the other a key.
Bodies more closely resembling geometric shapes
or machines
than human figures.
Stained glass Indians
hidden behind walls for decades
discovered in a renovation and restored.
Artist unknown.
Security and Fidelity.
Allegorical
The MichCon guidebook says.

Decorative Rookwood and Pewabic tile.
A great stairway from the lobby
made of Travertine, Belgian, and Numidian marble
with Monel metal rails.
Walls of Mankato stone.
A clock by Tiffany.

She emptied wastebaskets
swept and polished
dusted and mopped
this secular holy of holies.
And registered as an alien in January each year.
Janitress.

No matter what she said
or when she spoke
her words always sounded
like someone uncomfortable with speech
clearing her throat.

As soon as we arrived, she’d fry pierogi
and, sometimes, kielbasa in butter.
After I ate my fill
with sour cream and horseradish
I’d lie still in her bed
piled high with feather quilts
like the Princess and the Pea
and watch the pattern of light
through the shade.
The murmur of Papa’s voice and hers
sounding like geese bedded down for the night
on melting northern lakes
my lullaby.