Giant Nazi Flag Escapes From an Attic Vodka Box
Ralph Sneeden
My mother lets it out by accident,
mistaken for another crate of crap,
tax returns to shred. Standard
of a century’s cruel alluvion,
as if pressed and folded yesterday,
poised for one more parade, no
moth holes, a flume-blade of cloth
to be dropped on the desperately complicit
or blot every arch’s camber
and pigeon-thronged entablature,
instead of searing our ceiling
with pink light. A souvenir
my father never mentioned before
he died, unlike the snake of spurred
wire, public, mounted on its routed
plaque above his desk, memento
snipped that day of his deliverance
from the camp. The flag unfurls
from her fingers like a bolt
of oxygenated blood from catwalk
balcony to living room, rip
against the tidal bore of twilight
filling windows with the cove’s
kleptocracy, that single heron
crimping an eel to heft it flailing
into the conflations of Autumn, over
the meager pockets of marshbank reflections
being siphoned of their last silver.