PHOTOGRAPH WITH EXPECTATION 

— April 30, 1986, Czechoslovakia

Mom with her sister in their first two-piece
bathing suits: two girls under an oatmeal sky,
in dissolved light. Their elbows against grass
or concrete, gaze rested on hairless boys
in Arena speedos. One of the boys
could be my father. In a few tired years,
the Velvet Revolution. In a few wry
years, I’ll be born. The hammer and sickle
have been silent for days, tracking the wind,
predicting weather. Here the wind will lift
suddenly, black cloud in its iron fist—
Chernobyl’s radioactive plume, noise-
less fallout. It’ll drop fast, as toxic rain,
and then: dead air, blue pool, gray skies again.

ONDŘEJ PAZDÍREK is a Czech-American writer and translator. He is the winner of the 2017 Beacon Street Prize in poetry from Redivider. His work has been nominated for the Bettering American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. His poems and translations have most recently appeared in Poet Lore, Western Humanities Review, PANK, Guernica, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Meridian, and are forthcoming from RHINO Poetry and Gulf Coast, among others. He lives in Iowa City with his wife and two herding dogs.