No Modifier At All


By MARGO BERDESHEVSKY     |     POETRY     |     VOLUME 50.1&2     |     2016 AUBURN WITNESS POETRY PRIZE FINALIST





None. No one is not connected to someone else in the city who was hurt that night or dead. It is
the no-degrees of separation or escape. Or times we’ve been borne to. Everyone knows someone

who knew at least one in a city of millions. Open terraces under streetlamps and a fingernail of
moon. Tables of friends. A concert by The Eagles of Death Metal and autumn and blood and no

breath and the young. The rifles and a will to end something. Paris, for lovers—I open my door to
a man I’ve been calling all this week—to fix my door. Hamid, thin as a pencil, flaming as a showgirl.

A face from the projects. A face from the once-upon-colonies. My lock no longer works. These are
days when one thinks of closing doors. He stands in my hall, eyes like tunnels and sewers that bend

under the city. Last Saturday there was a carnival bulging in those tunnels. People vowed to dance
to wear costumes to live unless they die. I wore silk. Rented gowns, and feathers, and masks.

You had to be invited. Steps, underneath our city. I wore red. Who are you, someone whispered in
the dark. I don’t know, is anyone’s reply. I’m so sorry I have not answered you earlier in the week, Madame.

My sister. The baby one. She is—was one of—in the café. She came to the birthday for her lover. Her name was
Djamila. I had photographed candles and flowers left for the murdered in front of that café, the day

after. I remember that name. Djamila, I tell him. His eyes are sewers, tunnels. He cries. I cry. Destiny,
he mumbles so softly I am not sure I have heard. He pulls his satchel of tools into my hall to repair

my door. There is a noise somewhere that is too loud. We are strangers. He has come to fix my
door. Holding one another until it is over. No modifier at all.



—for the Paris massacres, November 2015






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MARGO BERDESHEVSKY often lives in Paris. Her recent poetry manuscript was a finalist for the National Poetry Series 2015. Her published collections are Between Soul and Stone and But a Passage in Wilderness. Her book of illustrated stories, Beautiful Soon Enough, received Fiction Collective Two’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Pleiades, New Letters, Poetry International, The Collagist, Prairie Schooner, and Gulf Coast, among others.

VOLUME 50.1&2





This poem was a finalist for our 2016 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York. Learn more about the contest here.