Hollow Cost

Hollow Cost

So here was Mrs. Katz with her blue-numbered arm
and I thought, where's the rub, where's the harm

in asking. By the time she got to ovens I was lost—
camps, showers, "the hollow cost,"

something monsters and "the horror of wore."
Mrs. Vanner swore

her little heifers' ears stamped in indigo
numbers didn't hurt and no one'd go

mistake them, now would they. So how was I to know
when I numbered to the elbow

my arms, my brother, the baby, my dolls –
how was I to know such floodwalls

of fury would open on my head. That skin,
scrubbed raw, burned for weeks like an oven.