From Vol. VI #6
Missing
By Dina Elenbogen
Blame it on the brutal winter
tomatoes still not ripe
enough to pick
her mother at work all day sometimes missing
until midnight Now she’s gone
missing 15 black last seen on her bike no helmet
wanting to go anywhere
except where she went missing
I miss you these days
You’ve missed the point of our silence
the place where river turns to lake
Three boys missing in the West Bank
were found We were right there gathering
Sea daffodils when cell phones rang with the news
The country knew weeks before they announced
that they were no longer
missing but dead white 15 15 and 17
I miss when I could speak
in black and white
when words weren’t so often missing
An Israeli soldier missing
in action is dead inside his helmet
What’s missing from the story
is whether he had been captured
first then killed by his own
ammunition
I miss when I could speak
into your ear instead of dancing over the missing
spaces the way that poems do
The missing girl’s face
is on the tunnel below the tracks
where I run before sunrise
She has been found now
on the south side of the city
What’s missing is how
she got there
she is safe and the water’s edge where I keep
running is calm
What I miss
most is swimming out to the deep center
which is too cold this summer
Blame it on last winter the missing sea-glass the war
that runs through us like wild rivers
even when we are missing
Dina Elenbogen is author of the memoir Drawn from Water (BkMK University of Missouri Press) and the poetry collection Apples of the Earth (Spuyten Duyvil, NY). Her work has appeared in anthologies such as City of the Big Shoulders (University of Iowa Press), Beyond Lament (Northwestern University Press), Where We Find Ourselves (SUNYPress), and magazines and journals such as Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Bellevue Literary Review, Tikkun, and Paterson Literary Review. She earned an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago Graham School.