Sacred day of rain, the crowds on Karol’s Bridge thin out, slightly repentant of their tourist ways, hunker down in pensions and hotels, to ponder the weird twists of language to be found in their brochures, or complain of the thinness of the towels, or of the pickpockets who speak the quick language of the…
Recent downpour, the black streets glisten, the red and white bus dips down like a sail into the runoff pooled near the tram tracks. Fifteen stories above, I drink beer, floating in my own sea—the smell of mushrooms frying in the kitchen—while the dark spike of the Palace of Culture fades into the blackness of…
I’ve seen them all over the city. After midnight near the consulate, closer to the streetlight than you might expect: a parked car, windows misted, wings for a trademark. And the muffled urgencies from the back seat—someone about to die, perhaps, or be delivered—the sleek silhouette of a woman’s legs lifted and spread behind the…
One spring night, at the end of my street God was lying in wait. A friend and I were sitting in his new sedan like a couple of cops on surveillance, shooting the breeze to pass the time, chatting up the daydreams, the raw deals, all the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s, the latest “Can you believe that?” As…
The girl in a blue dress is standing on pink tile and gazing back at the artist as if looking through him for a place to rest. The day is brilliant with Mediterranean light Modigliani fled for the gravity of dark hotels, human throats elongated like sunflowers on the back streets of Paris, barefoot girls—this…
She has always been clever and poor, Especially here off the Yugoslav Train on a platform of dust. Clever was Her breakfast of nutmeg ground in water In place of rationed tea. Poor was the cracked Cup, the missing bread. Clever are the six Handkerchiefs stitched to the size of a scarf And knotted at…
In a backwards accident, Men cutting the old furnace Out to make room for oil Find the wedding band that Slipped, in February Nineteen twenty-four, Down the heat vent and melted To a coal. It was the coldest Month of the year my mother Was born, and The Captain Sat quiet while his wife, Her…
Your husband’s laugh, a glass of grenadine. You greet the guests, steer coats onto your arms. Ice rattles the kitchen: he’s mixing drinks. You stand where you can keep an eye on him. One measured glance at me, your face a smooth storm, and I know whatever I’d say—vague murmurings in one…
The weird thing about the place was the speed of light— eight, nine miles an hour, tops. Isweartagod! It was beautiful, though, the way it felt slowing over you like a balmy breeze—light slow enough to catch in a, in a cup, light you could smear on a slice of bread like jam, light you…
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