60 Andrassey, Budapest

George Korolog

I ask anyone for a pencil, scratch the name across
the back of the admissions ticket, "Anasztaz Sultis,"
professor emeritus, philosophy, hung with piano wire for
them, November 22, 1940, left your house, stained grey
fedora, Buber, Wittgenstein, shoes with no laces, an eggshell
heart reminding your wife, one last time, fresh bread was
coming, stepped into the bitter Budapest air, occupied, footsteps
vanishing into the evening snow, swallowed in the night by
beasts that waited under your bed in toe nailed jackboots, lived
in the dark recess of the ceiling, snatched you with furtive hands
sliding down out of the shadows, lifting you to a place where
nightmare was celebrated, where monsters pleasured themselves
with agony smeared so close it reeked shit, stained faces purple
and bulging. Schutzstaffel, stood you on a block, slipped the
noose, tips of your toe nails scraping the floor, twirled like a
ballerina in a slow cabriole, dangling, gone, now hanging with
the others, resurrected, identity cards staring from the wall.
I am haunted by eyes.

The House of Terror is a museum in Budapest, Hungary, located at 60 Andrassey Street. The site was the headquarters of the Nazi secret police from 1931-1945 where people were taken, interrogated, tortured and killed in the basement of the building. The same site was used by the Soviets during their occupation of Budapest from 1945 to 1970 for the same purpose. It is now a museum of the occupation.

George Korolog

is an active member of The Stanford Writers Studio and has had his work published in numerous print and online magazines such as Red River Review, Connotation Press, Poets& Artists Magazine, The Monarch Review, Seventh Circle Press, riverbabble, Contemporary Haibun, Stone Highway Review, Blue Fifth, Red Ochre Lit, Blue Lake Review, Willows Wept Review and many others. Three of his poems will appear in the Whittaker Prize Anthology, "From Here to Back and There Again," to be published in February 2012.