About the Russians


I don’t know the Russians
just a little Chekhov 
whose stories seem to end
suddenly
I like that

Tried to read Anna Karenina
but she sat unopened on my night stand
attractive girl I never 
had the nerve to ask to dance

Irina Ratushkinskaya’s poems
made my bones 
a cage in a cold room
each poem on a bar of soap 
memorized like red cells 
remember each molecule 
of oxygen brought to the heart

I’m going to read War and Peace
or something by Pushkin
then we can talk
over coffee perhaps
I’d like that

We’ll sit in Lester’s Diner
during a raging storm
black clouds rumbling Russian
We’ll be Boris and Natasha 
eating éclairs
The sky dark 
silent film about Rasputin 
sound of spoons in porcelain cups  
clarion to war against
chattering cops    waitresses
You’ll look out the window
order apple pie
I’ll write a poem 
in whipped cream




​
Night Bites Me in the Dark
 

Flash of miscellaneous nightwork:
you’re waiting tables.
The wind of empty men
somewhere in a ghetto outside Paris
rings the bell.
I wanted to meet you in the rain
of some surreal city
where everything is rooftops,
tap dancing.
I never get it right.
Nothing comes in grace
except while I sleep.
There I have met you.
There I have taken you home.