Veronica Kornberg

Springtime in Prague

The season of white asparagus
and sidewalk cafes, of open doorways
spilling Janácek.  Dark church spires

like furled umbrellas prick a milk sky.
In the Jewish Museum, children’s drawings
from Terezin: Barbed wire for a rose’s

thorny stem. A slot of blue
mountain viewed through a keyhole.
We emerge into broken sunlight

and clean streets—a century of grime
pressure-washed from the stone façades,
trash discretely stowed.

The rain, it seems, has stopped. We eat
sausages and rye bread at a kiosk,
watch runoff flow across the cobbles

to disappear down drains fully plumbed
and functional, unlike the fake faucets
created to fool Red Cross inspectors

who never bothered to turn the tap. People
are laughing. They drink beer in a wooden boat
placed in the dirt outside a bar. The day

ripples with pleasure. Our sauerkraut is creamy,
acidic, flecked with caraway. When we chew
it is the silence we taste.

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Veronica Kornberg lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Indiana Review, Calyx and Plume. Veronica is a habitat gardener and a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review.