Two dozen partisans, wearing threadbare clothes and shoes that were falling apart at the seams, advanced towards us

Two dozen partisans, wearing threadbare clothes and shoes that were falling apart at the seams, advanced towards us, headed by their leader, a tall man with bright eyes and a square jaw, and followed by the boy, with whom I had escaped from the burning truck. 

They surrounded the two SS soldiers, forced them to kneel down, and tied their hands behind them. 

The Germans were shivering in fear. Were these the same people who—only a few days ago—had strutted around their victims on the way to the execution site? Were these the same people who had charged ahead, wielding their batons, to capture the boy and me? Their sense of authority had collapsed. 

And the little French they used to know must have flown right out of their heads, to the point that not a word was left. One of them cleared his throat a few times, started to say something, then took a breath, somewhat haltingly, only to end up swallowing his spit. And the other made a failed attempt to deny who he was. In a weak, shaky voice, he mumbled, “Ich bin kein Deutsch.”

“Really?” said the leader. “You are not a German? Could have fooled me!”

He made a slight gesture to his men and at once, they raised the Germans to their feet. Then they took them away, not before stripping them of their boots. After all, good footwear was nothing to sneeze at.

Meanwhile, the traitor wiped the beads of sweat off his upper lip. “Will they be shot?” he asked, anxiously.

“No,” said the boy. “They will join the others, down at our camp.”

“What others?” 

“Those who escaped from the burning vehicles. We have rounded them up.”

“Too bad,” said the traitor, who must have been hoping, up to this moment, to be rescued by the Germans. “I mean, too bad for them.”

With that, he swung around and was just about to dart out into the woods when two of the partisans laid their hands him. They relieved him of his Pistolet Automatique and shoved him to the ground.

Marriage before Death

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The humble beginning of a new sculpture

This is the humble beginning of a new sculpture. Usually I don't show the process, and wait until the piece is finished in as polished a state as can be. But today, I'm sharing with you how I start building it. I always start by creating not only the face but also the hands and feet -- those are the parts that are most expressive and I give them the attention they deserve. Then I creat a wire armature--a 'stick figure' if you will--and start building the limbs and the body onto this armature. Next time, I'll share how it'll look.

So this is close to the finished piece-- one of two pieces I have in mind. I touched its 'vallies' with brown shoe-polish to accentuate the depth and its ridges with a dab bronze acrylic paint to accentuate the lines. Because I used oil-based clay on a metal armature, he can move his limbs and my next step will be to try and animate his movements.

A thriller that is hard to put down!

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5.0 out of 5 stars A thriller that is hard to put down!

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2023

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Several stories here, woven together masterfully! Ash has moved to Florida to help recover from her ordeal of being raped and left in a coma to die. In the new community where she has settled, she finds herself in the middle of another mystery. Missing boys and evidence of someone dying in the house she is renting. Of course Ashley has to find out what happened.

Conveniently her father lives in the same town of Clearwater along with his new wife, Heather, who encounters Ashley and tries to befriend her. She provides some good counsel, but Ash still cannot stand her for what she did to her mother.

Although trying to distance herself from her past, Ash is confronted with a new stalker who is just a boy. But it turns out he is more than a teen who seems to have lust on his mind. When Ashley becomes witness to the murder of the father of a boy she is tutoring, the story takes on a violent twist that puts Ash in mortal danger. How she survives is a combination of recklessness and bravery.

Finding David

Author Anna Belfrage invited me to write a special feature for her wonderful blog--aptly named Stolen Moments--and I'm grateful to her for the opportunity! 

Please check out here 

From art to art – how writer Uvi Poznansky found her David and Bathsheba in various paintings

 

At first I am nothing. A shred of a shred

 So, here is my animation of SHRED (with my paper-engineered creation) -- turn up the volume!

At first I am nothing. A shred of a shred

Not alive… not even dead

An inanimate object lying limp in your hands

Dreaming of oceans, of faraway lands.

When you cut me I won’t cry

You flesh me through pain. I won’t utter a sigh

You give me breath, you make me blink

But I cringe when you paint me pink

You give me eyesight, you give me smell

You control every move. So I must rebel

I’ll rise to a limp and in search of glory

I’ll take my own steps, write my own story

My existence is flimsy, I am destined to fold

But until that time, let me out of your hold

Let me go, let me go… Loosen your grip

Until that moment that ends with a rip.

I pulled him down, bringing him on top of me, and there on the dirt we grappled, blow by savage blow

Having reached bottom I caught his arm and twisted it behind him till he screamed. He crumpled in agony. I pulled him down, bringing him on top of me, and there on the dirt we grappled, blow by savage blow. 

In this scuffle, there was no pretense of civility. No rules—except one: the man who got the upper hand would live to see another day. I punched him in the gut. He kicked me in the groin. With a grunt I rolled away. 

The traitor caught my wrist and sunk his teeth into it. Maddened by the bite I pulled my hand, pulled it free only to come back a moment later and cover his mouth, his nostrils. Gagging, he flailed his arms about, then sank to the ground. I relished the sound of his gasping, gasping for air. 

His bloodshot eye bored into mine. It seemed as if any second now, it would burst. The wounds across his neck, where my chain had choked him in our earlier fight, were smeared with dry blood. Under them, a vein that had been barely visible up to now began throbbing furiously. 

The beret he had taken from the boy fell from his head and rolled across the dust. He became limp. I thought he might pass out—but then, once more, he bit my hand. With a slight tremor in it, my grip started loosening. He squirmed away, only to come back at me with a blunt punch. 

Knock. Strike. Slap.

With that last blow, a strange thing happened to me: time seemed to slow down. I saw his knuckled fist growing larger, coming at me. It seemed so dreamingly sluggish—until at last it hit me. 

My head bounced back. For a moment, everything around me became fuzzy. 

I wiped the sweat off my eyes, only to see his hunched figure— blurred, still—staggering into a stand over me. 

For a while, I must have lost consciousness. When I looked again he was not there anymore, only a hazy background hanging in his stead: distant blue smoke swirling into the sky, marred with ash. 

I was too weak to stir. Oh, how easy it would be to give it up, all this senseless suffering! 

But no: despite the pain, my body screamed to live. I propped myself up against a tree trunk, and wondered: Where was the traitor? Where did he go? 

This scene happens in a forrest, and a fire is spreading from the armed cars that have just been ambushed by the French Resistance fighters. Lenny and the French collaborator, who has helped the Nazis in the selection process earlier, are at each other's throat.

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Marriage before Death

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"Uvi Poznansky raises the stakes in a high stakes story, filled with uncertainty, drama and suspense... This book is a nail biter and one I found hard to put down. For me, this is Uvi Poznansky's best novel to date." 

- Richard Weatherly, Author

I knew it! She can twist him around her little finger, if she wants to

Lenny’s gone, but still, I’m thinking about him, about how he’s touched on that time, the lost time nearly five years ago, when I went out the door, swearing I ain’t gonna come back to him, not ever. What he hasn’t said—and what left such a bitter taste in my mouth—is how he told me, back then, “You are a nice kid, Anita. Go, go back to where you came from. Go back to your mama.” 

And what he don’t know is that ma wasn’t all too happy to see me, “Because,” she said, “I told you so, didn’t I? Didn’t I say, he’s gonna grow tired of you, and dump you before you know it? He’s gonna go back to his wife, ‘cause it’s her that he wants—not you! And if not her, then—then, it must be something else with him, always something else, like, looking for other women. Maybe they remind him, somehow, of that thing, who knows what it is, which he found in her. Maybe what he’s really looking for is just, like, the idea of her.” 

And when I mumbled, “Whatever,” ma said, “I knew it! She can twist him around her little finger, if she wants to.”

She didn’t tell me nothing else about this thing, this idea of her, which ma thought was fixed, somehow, in Lenny’s head, like some piece of music; and I, I didn’t ask. Instead, I bought a six-pack for her and a six-pack for me, and we sat down on her pillows, on the narrow iron bed, drinking beer; she talking, me weeping all night, after which ma wiped my face, and grabbed the palm of my hand—like she used to do in the old days—to read it. 

And she told me to stay put, to wait for her, ‘cause she had something crucial, something real big to tell me, like, about the future. I reckon she saw some clue of what was coming—but didn’t quite grasp it, not in full, anyway, ‘cause the next thing you know, ma went out, came back a second later, picked the empty beer bottles, and took them with her. Along the way she gave me a peck, smack in the middle of my forehead, which surprised me. 

Then, having kissed me goodbye, she went out again, and then... Then, on her way to work, right there on the corner of Euclid Street—Bang! I could hear the sound, out there—she was killed in a car accident.

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The Music of Us

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