Snow Lake City
Our first trip to the bodega is for limes.
On the left bank of afternoon,
the mottled carcass of a whole pig carried out
the butcher-shop door and laid, gingerly,
in the plastic-lined hull of a pick-up.
On the right bank, a hand-cart festooned
with inflated bags of chile duros. Gutted
sand dollars. Ocean artifacts. The white papering
the inside of this rind is called the pericarp, I keep
from saying. A year churns out its soured tape
of marketers and moony marketees. My husband
is the former. I mean, my former husband. Was.
We lose count. A winter trip, skating from cone
to feathery cone of street light, blue-tinged
by refinery flares, the only storefront lit
on Christmas Eve, to buy a place-holder engagement
ring. Mood ring. My hand so cold it turns
the mood stone black. Swimming in his
colossal mitt. Liquid crystals, I might say. Invented
the year I was born. Watching the lopsided figure our
merged shadows stammer on the snow: me a foot
shorter, him ten years younger. Good year, he grins.
Lose count. What who sells. What who buys.
Pawns. What we sell. Who exchanges what
for what. What nobody any longer buys.
Blue-tinged in throttled flare, trap jut one
of the city’s miniature factories in a snow-globe
dome and poof! a Winter Palace. Watch
the glossy ashes swirl. I mean, the midnight
snow. A year over-garnished and bittering
in its white-paper rind. I can’t shake a conviction
that snow globes freeze those moments
just before disaster, enclose and crystallize.
Don’t give me that, I say. He says, not buying it.
Perestroika, Cha Cha Cha
In an adjacent room, my parents glaze in front of DWTS,
Elizabeth Berkley cha cha cha-ing with the Ukrainian pro.
So much glitter kitsch, Gorbachev. So much jackhammer hip.
It’s true, Gorbachev, darling of my sixth-grade Weekly Reader,
I’ve moved back into the basement of my parents’ ranch-style house.
Divorce. Student loans. Avant-midlife crisis. If anyone looks
askance, I counter: Perestroika, motherfucker! I’m restructuring.
Which is to say, Mishka, I’m perfectly single now, and so
are you. I think we owe ourselves a secret midnight
summit. Your dacha or . . . ? Gorbachev, I have to confess:
I’ve already tattooed the heroic splatter of your archipelago
birthmark on my inner wrist in permanent wine-dark ink.
Leave prudence to the apparatchiks, Gorbachev; Reagan is dead,
and I can read our future. You’re the Pisces for this Sagittarius,
the fish for my red umbrella. Herring to chase my star-clotted vodka.
This May Day, we’ll adopt a tea-cup pig and name her Politburo.
Drape each flea-market birdcage in brocade and stick on
hand-lettered placards: This Throat Closed for Perestroika!
Our guilty-pleasure food truck re-names your favorite combo
plate the #4 Burrito Supreme Soviet. I never ask you
to downsize your closet stockpile of Springsteen
or Delicados salsa. Darling Gorbachev! Come sweep me
from the wood-panel judgments of a petty bourgeoisie.
We’ll spend next season dancing in our Cuban summer bunker.
Brenda Sieczkowski’s poems and lyric essays have appeared widely in print and on-line journals. Her chapbook, Wonder Girl in Monster Land, was published in 2012 by dancing girl press. A second chapbook, Fallout & Flotation Devices, is now available from Little Red Leaves’ Textile Series. Like Oysters Observing the Sun, her first full-length collection, was recently released by Black Lawrence Press. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Omaha, Nebraska.