Eastern Europe no place for
the newly miserable
No one lives here
we all live somewhere else
where life happens
Work happens here work and
waiting to leave
dreary evenings rain and snow
rotten vegetables
an Edward Hopper nightmare
the only colors
filthy yellow blood red
and the joyless unrelenting gray
A bus rounds the corner
the crush of people
as if Christ himself
were behind the wheel
come to save us from this
place
and these old ladies all belly
breast and sharp elbows moustaches
stippled on their angry lips
I press forward with them
through folding doors to
somewhere else
the city waits on the other side
a desperate whore with nothing
but time
Inside the bus we wait and breathe and wait
to be delivered
the dead air hangs between our faces
horrible shoes scuffing the floor
The bus lumbers forward
jolting us
old woman's hand clawing my sleeve
no smile has touched her lips since
the war
A hand swipes across the window
translucent now with our moisture
Suddenly there are trees
red-shingled roofs melting through snow
then a field of brown stalks
The landscape a dirty sheet
unfolding toward the horizon
Two hundred blackbirds descend
like the shadow of a
broken-hearted goddess