Michelle Tokarczyk
St George the Dragon Slayer
Spitting up fire like a wizened carney.
Flopping those silly sheetrock wings.
An overgrown iguana imitating flight.
Too lazy and lumbering to hunt,
its flames devour little sheep,
singe their curls to ashes.
Its flames annihilate little
children baled into bales of hay.
Their screams scar the heavens.
But its roars never silence voices
scheming, weeping, hoping, praying.
Waiting for George to gallop through
brandishing a sword and compassion.
See princess’s blood-drained face.
Strike. Watch the monster slither
under the horse’s hooves. Watch
its blood drain, its fire smolder.
Listen to peace awaken.
St. George, your legend is a prayer.
We survey the charred landscape.
The hasty graves. We wait.
Creating Ukrainian Easter Eggs, 2022
The word pysanky comes from
the Ukrainian word for “to write."
She inscribes on an egg as fragile
as the tingling of an idea for a poem
Sheltering the egg between thumb
and middle finger, pencil in hand,
she sketches an outline. Thoughts brew
as the stylus heats, as her hands
remember lessons from her mother’s art.
Where shell white color will remain,
she applies clear wax. Moves to yellow,
to blue, green, black background.
With her stylus she sketches oak leaves,
pine trees. Inscribes spirals. Wax
then coats everything. The egg
is held over the candle flame, and
everything that is not decorated egg
disappears. With blower in her mouth,
she forces out the white and yolk.
Creating one more pysanka for
the displayed pysanky that invite
us to look closely. To marvel
at the culture passed down through
fragile objects in women’s hands
*Traditional colored Ukrainian Easter eggs. Pysanka is the singular form of pysanky.
