NICK LANTZ Baba Yaga For centuries I was small and gray as the peel of a mouse. I sucked ice to stay warm, washed my clothes in streams as cold as a tsar’s heart. Imagine my surprise, then, at this swamp, so hot the gutters burped roaches with every rain, and storms swept down like pogroms. When the whole neighborhood lost power, I wrapped myself in the hurricane’s itchy wool and walked to the local gas station mini mart. I watched a fistfight break out over milk, a woman weeping by her stalled car. They couldn’t see the mud on their feet, but I had known that mud for a thousand years. It never comes off. I walked home. The sky was a broken window. That’s when I found him, the baby, toddling in the roadside ditch, a little toupee of mosquitos on his bald head. I tucked him in my mouth for safekeeping. He didn’t cry. Later, when I spit him out on my kitchen table, he was asleep. I petted him with my mouse claws. I tried to clean his feet, but the dirt wouldn’t come off, so I dressed him in socks and an old shirt. On the news, the king was cutting the ribbon at the newest mass grave. That could be you someday, I said to the baby, pinching his bug-bit cheek. He looked up at me then, and grabbed my hand so hard my finger broke. Was it love I felt?
★ Read our interview with Nick Lantz on the use of folklore in exploring the anxieties and absurdities of late-stage capitalism ★
This poem is like a wonderous how-to of what you can do with a folktale figure. Really enjoyed this--the quiet horror.
Read Nick's interview and found out there are more Baba Yaga poems. I can't wait to read the rest, as I enjoyed reading this one so much.
Favourite line: "the gutters burped roaches with every rain"