Lynn Powers © 2006 All Rights Reserved
Lynn Powers © 2006 All Rights Reserved
Moscow
in English sounds deceptively
soft. The measured exclamation
of the double ‘O’s, round as the onion
domes in the Square. Moskva:
there’s a city to be
reckoned with. I am pliant
as an American without
the obvious giveaways,
camouflaged & avoiding the smile.
My first friend, Olga.
lives in an old palace with bile-
drenched stairs. Doors padded
in leather. These places were built
to cushion intruders.
Olga cooks wearing only a thong,
the twin white curves of her backside
disconcerting enough to be
a kind of welcome. Americans
are too puritanical about the flesh.
Olga: a good cook and a model mother.
I imagine the State
granted her the coveted
apartment. It's all a lottery here,
and esteemed professors of linguistics
rarely win. Her little daughter
tells me it was the final gift
from her long-departed Papa.
Departed where? I ask
but she only shrugs.
Maybe he is among the names
bold-faced in the paper, eliminated
in protest of excess. At Olga’s,
the grimy armor of the metro
is dismantled. In her kitchen
dissolved
by cabbage steam
I am finally without
distinguishing marks.
The Butcher
Flirting fiercely with my mother,
black-mustached Georgian
virile with carcasses,
solemn deer faces still intact.
His apron blinding white, but the KGB
stops him every day for his papers.
My mother struggles home, riddled
with a suggestion of blood, to repackage
breasts & haunches
into bite sizes for a cocktail party.MICHELLE BROWN was born in London and grew up all over Eastern Europe. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan.