Standing

You can disguise the autobiographical
in the third person, she says
you can spy.

The Polish poet
reads to us
a narrative of injury,
under surveillance
a woman
a pelvis
a tiled bathroom floor
a pool of water.

She offers anatomical names
geographical observations
a landscape of pain like the Polish
roads made for German tanks.

There are storks in Poland
that nest on the roofs of houses,
they migrate, and return to the same
address to stand by chimneys
for warmth.

The Polish poet sways,
I worry for her feet
so long in standing
I want to sit down for her.