Poetry: Peter Golub
For Anna
On the way home I imagine
You sitting at the kitchen table
Next to the bright red flowers
In one of the black and white photos
Piled onto the kitchen table
You stand knee deep in mud next to the Moscow State University
Smiling like a kid on Christmas
Planting trees into the bright future
You were 25 years old, which is my age now
Now some 50 years later you wait
For your daughter, who is my mother
She has promised to come
And drink a glass of cheap white wine
In honor of the great struggle
Which has come to mean almost nothing
The Pelican
Let us suppose the mind is a legion
With a thousand varieties of sausage and vodka
And also that a beautiful girl is bathing in a moon lit river
Suppose you are standing on the sandy bank
Smoking a cigarette near a small fire
In the morning you wake up covered in dew
A huge bird is but a foot away from your head
On the way back to the village
A woman with gold teeth
Asks you to help her carry two pails of water
It is your wedding day
You are truly the luckiest man in the world
December
At the end of the afternoon
With the final bits of winter light hitting
The plants on the green ladder
Which stands on a table
Next to all the bookshelves
I sit on the couch
And do a little vacuuming
And write this poem
Which is only for you
I would like you to imagine
Something impossible
Not a miracle
For today these seem
The bread and butter of reality
But something impossible
For instance imagine
That my mother is both calling
And not calling
That she talks to me about death
A thing we know nothing about
Now imagine all the girls of the world
Small, potential women
With violins and other musical instruments
They are practicing
Floating a little
The things around them
Imagine one of them growing up
To be the president of the United States
Imagine she is a Roman
But with an Audrey Hepburn nose
And a heart that swells like the ocean
With melting ice
Imagine her greatest struggles
That she leads the country into an impossible war
With no sword, no battalions of brave young men
Whose loyalty and love must never be questioned
No, she is alone
And watches the remaining light fall through the air
Full of planes and other machinery
But even this will pass
Eventually disappearing with the last history book
Macerated in the flood
Kombucha Dowry
the beginning of it is a name
the little girl asks
are they all like this
must I be in love
with a girl so terribly young
and beautiful
Carlos the photographer
is still younger
must I model for him
the large German women
speaks in diminutives
I feel a little disembodied
I live in a desert city
the wind howls coolly outside
through the falling sun
my plants are good
my life is a happy mess
full of failure, which
canceling itself out makes
a salad of small successes
I tape it to the refrigerator
the wind howls and howls
it gladdens me
I wonder who it’s scaring
who waits alone
in the middle of the day
waiting
embarrassed by some childhood memory
with their pants down
and toothpaste smeared across the mirror
–for Christ’s sake!
there are no rules anymore
the police are ninnies
the sages are the police
only time falling
unevenly
over everything
50 years is nothing
and I am already the most important prince
with the biggest herd of yaks
licking each other
what is your dowry
how can I please your father
so that you too will know
this wind
this gorgeous howling wind