David Kirby

            Polina Gelman Has a Lot of Stories                                               

The next time you can’t sleep
tell yourself it’s World War II and you’re a German soldier
on the Eastern front
and your bunkmate is going on about how he’s going to get a second tattoo
of der Führer on his other arm

when suddenly out of the sky comes the whistling noise a bomb makes
only you hadn’t heard any aircraft
and that’s when you realize it’s the night witches
Russian women aviators flying planes of wood and fabric that were meant
for training purposes only

Die Nachthexen shouts your bunkie
as the women power down their engines
and swoosh through the darkness like gnarly old crones on broomsticks
even though they’re young and fresh-faced
which makes you love them even more
plus they hate Hitler
that’s sexy right there

Polina Gelman was a night witch
boy does she have some stories
at just under five feet she was too short
to be a pilot and trained as a navigator instead
not that it mattered since the planes had dual controls
and often the navigators flew them anyway

those planes were so primitive that the Germans never saw them coming
first of all they were slow
Gelman remembers looking down and seeing hers being passed
by a car on the ground
they weren’t made of metal
and they didn’t have radios
meaning radar couldn’t pick them up

the idea was to keep the Germans from sleeping
but the night witches didn’t sleep either
so the pilots and navigators made a deal
one would sleep on the way out
the other later on the way back to base

compare Polina Gelman’s story
to what the movies tell us about people
the movies tell us that a brooding billionaire uses trauma
as an excuse to commit felonies while wearing fancy pajamas
or a scientist falls into a vat of something
and immediately decides to fight crime instead of calling a doctor

when the war was over
Polina Gelman got married
had a daughter
became a teacher

most heroic deeds aren’t performed
by a goddess in bullet-proof armor who discovers that justice
is best served with slow-motion hair flips
or a teenage wall-crawler who finally understands that puberty and supervillains
are basically the same thing

they’re performed by people like Polina Gelman

a lot of what we know about the night witches
is thanks to Gelman
who became a spokeswitch of sorts
though it bothered her when it seemed as though the world
only wanted to hear about the night witches from her

it wasn’t just me she told an interviewer in her Moscow apartment
we all had to fly
Some people like to brag
I don’t want to be seen that way

doesn’t that make you love her even more
Polina Gelman you’re so stealthy
go Polina go

David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His latest books are a poetry collection, The Winter Dance Party, Poems 1983-2023, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Entertainment Weekly has called Kirby’s poetry one of “5 Reasons to Live.”