Famous/Infamous
THE ANGER OF ANNE FRANK

You can hide a concentration camp just about anywhere
There for example behind those trees
There’s a little opening just around the corner
You can’t quite see it from here
Where the cement trucks keep coming and going
What on earth are they building back there anyway
But to hide a Jew one Jew
Not to mention a family of Jews
Two families
Two families and one lovesick dentist
Jewish of course
And then on top of that or inside of it
To hide an anger as loud as a city
And more powerless than a petty official
In a very small town
Where everyone’s practically related
War is one thing but a dentist
Who shuts himself up in a bathroom for hours
What on earth is he building in there anyway
You can hide what you do you can hide what you think
But try and hide a feeling one feeling
Not to mention all the feelings that could fill a book
You could fill a book you could hide that book
But to hide one stomachache one heartache one
Heart’s bad weather
Not to mention all the good and beautiful weather
Well that is something some do better than others
Mothers hide it better than daughters


Copyright 2006,  Paul Hostovsky

Paul Hostovsky has work appearing or forthcoming in Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Comstock Review, Slant, and Spoon River Review. He works in Boston as an interpreter for the deaf.

 


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