Liz Marlow

Franz Stangl’s White Clothes

 
Franz Stangl was the commandant of Sobibor from April 1942 until August 1942 and was also the commandant of Treblinka from September 1, 1942 until August 1943. Under his command, Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews.

They are all mine—
                        mouths
                        full of precious opals
                        (some grayed from time). 

Patching potholes, 
crowning decay, 
curing an ache, 

their gold setting 
                        becomes a necklace 
                        or ring 
                        for my wife 

as the goldsmith
(one of them)
grasps the only fire I want—
                        power
                        to raze if not wielded 
                        like an eraser 
                        to a single name 
                        scribbled in pencil 
                        on a list. 

He melts 
what is useful.
Everything else he touches
reveals what they are— 
                        soot,
                        filth.

With their blood on his hands, 
he pulls 
                        gravestone teeth 
                        like yanking hooks 
                        from the mouths 
                        of caught fish. 

There is no use for gold 
                        on dead animals. 
                        Now it is mine. 

They are all mine.

Liz Marlow's debut chapbook, They Become Stars, was the winner of the 2019 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. Additionally, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions, The Greensboro Review, Nimrod International Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Minyan Magazine.