THE RIVER KILLED MY BROTHER
The American writer Paul Polansky is now presenting the public with yet another unique book of poems about the present-day ethnocide of the Romani people after the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia.
After reading this book, many will be shocked and surprised. No, it is not a book of provocation, as many will think. As a Rom who knows very well what racial discrimination means, I can confirm that this book is authentic in its portrayal of the stories of real, live Roma. The poems in The River Killed My Brother are a reflection of the post-revolution reality. The fall of communism, with its "hidden" form of genocide, brought about a new period of a "cold but more open" race war.
These poems are also a reflection of a reality in which "simple racialistic" principles have been stronger than those of democracy and the intent to build a multicultural, open society. State apartheid and the genocide of the Roma, "Gadzo democratic politics," have now become the norm in both of the former republics of Czechoslovakia. The reports of international organizations and a continuing wave of Romani asylum seekers from Slovakia and the Czech Republic should be proof enough of what is going on. But instead of an apology for this historical discrimination, for the "Wall" in the northern Czech town of Ustf nad Labem, for continued persecution of Roma civil rights activists (the case of Ondrej Giha, Sr.), for the inhumane defamation of Romani asylum seekers with epithets such as "ethno-tourists" (a term coined by Pal Csaky, the vicepremier for national minorities and human rights in Slovakia), for ignorance of the Romani Holocaust -- we find that the defamation of Roma is becoming more and more evident in our "ethnically pure" civil society.
I believe that the intelligence of a nation can be determined by whether it practices that imaginary superiority which leads to the genocide of other nations.
THE RIVER KILLED MY BROTHER
They weren't skinheads
who threw my brother into the river.
They were boys he had gone to school with.
Boys his own age, boys he knew, but had always avoided.
They caught him on the bridge. Some say he jumped.
I ran for help. I didn't have to go very far.
Two policemen were sitting in a car watching, laughing.
When I pleaded for help,
they slapped me, told me to go home.
I ran home, got my mother. Neighbors followed.
When we returned, my brother was dead, the body already taken away.
In court, the judge said the river killed my brother.
Now these boys are following me.
Z - 2012
Look at my purple tattoo,
here,
on my left forearm.
Z-2012.
Our government says I tattooed this on myself, to get compensation.
That's what our politicians think about us Holocaust survivors.
That we all lie,
like they do.
A SPECIAL SCHOOL
I've always known my daughter was bright.
Drawing pictures with many details, memorizing all the songs of our ancestors, playing the piano before she was five.
So I was surprised when her teacher came to our home and told us
our daughter wasn't ready for school.
Her Czech wasn't good enough, she needed help with her grammar.
My wife said that all six-year-olds need help with their grammar.
The principal agreed to see us.
He said our daughter was a nice girl,
but she would be the only Gypsy in her class.
We finally agreed.
We signed the paper.
We didn't want our little girl picked on.
But now when I walk her to school, and I see the plaque on her building, my heart breaks.
Why didn't they tell us her special school was a center for
the mentally retarded.
BUS STOP
My husband and I
had finished our shopping
and were standing by the bus stop
when this car pulled up.
My husband took early retirement because he couldn't see very well.
But I saw the men getting out were gadzos.
When I woke up in hospital I had a broken arm, a broken nose, and had lost all my front teeth.
But I still made it to my husband's funeral.
REVIEWS
Paul Polansky has become the poetic chronicler of Roma suffering in the "new" Europe. He is never bombastic, melodramatic, or overbearing. On the contrary, his poetry gets to the marrow through sober reporting, pared-down language, the terror of facts. These poems are documents that touch the heart, which is a supreme and, perhaps, the only possible form of the lyric today.
-Andrei Codrescu
...not a book of provocation, as many will think...this book is authentic in its portrayal of real, live, Roma. The poems in The River Killed My Brother are reflective of the post-revolution reality...telling the story of a people in Europe without their own national state, the most discriminated against people in Europe, a people suffering genocide. Their name is the Roma.
-Edward Muller
Leader of the Romani Reform Youth Movement of the Slovak National Congress
PAUL POLANSKY