for Ange Mlinko
Of C. H. Krumm—Charles Harrison, or Harry—
a single trace remains on Catalina,
so oxidized, so salt-worn I could barely
make out the name. How many must have seen it
while rambling from or trudging to the ferry
and given it no mind, no second look?
Lone lettered slat, corroded tongue depressor,
marking the island’s only casualty
of the Great War. I loitered, tried to guess at
his last deployment: Château-Thierry?
Had he been pierced, gassed, shattered in some lesser
clash in No Man’s Land, or bitten dead like Brooke?
I looked him up. A studio electrician,
for some time he sold beachy curios—
albums of sea moss, moonstones, flying fish wings—
by mail. He never wore a doughboy’s clothes.
Called up at twenty-nine, his home-front mission
was to run power through a lumber mill.
Dear Krumm, you cast your bread upon the water
for no return, and caught your death of flu
a month after the Armistice. A martyr
like you too seldom gets his modest due.
I’m on vacation in an age of slaughter
and I salute you, having time to kill.
Boris Dralyuk is an award-winning translator and critic, and the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems. His work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Best American Poetry 2023, and elsewhere. He is a Tulsa Artist Fellow, teaches at the University of Tulsa, and edits Nimrod.
