Christmas Borsch

At the Christmas table my father in law

quotes Marx and says that Lenin was a righteous fellow

I think he says it for me to hear it

but I don’t know

At the Christmas table my mother in law

never talks about politics

and is very devoted to catholic faith

but turns the blind ear to everything

as long as it pays

I sit at this Christmas table

eating their borsch

and feeling quite stupid and dumb

while thinking about my atheist aunt

who was rotting in communist prison

for rejecting the pravda’s of Lenin and Marx

My father in law

is sitting next to me and I don’t know why on my right

again quoting Engels and Marx

and I am eating this salty borsch

thinking about my grandpa’s running away from the Soviet’s hands

I want to get up

but my mother in law

pours into my plate just a little more

of her

sour Christmas borsch.

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Deadfall. Prose poem.

Stuffy, ghastly hot day in New York isn’t promising anything good. In the evening, in between the stale air one after another mad yells and screams are exploding in the tiny apartments on my street. I am wondering how many murders were committed tonight. And there was a war in my apartment as well, which made me feel absolutely deserted, but strangely light and philosophical at the same time. I wasn’t thinking about murder though, although I did feel a new kind of cold hatred; suicide always felt like a closer option according to my nature. I looked through the window. Why isn’t anybody balancing on the roof.  Why are people so quiet and enduring this hatred which trickle from every brick tonight. This silent hatred in the middle of nothing. Cruel, cruel evening. I opened a window again. Somebody, a wild tiger is tearing someone’s guts. Just here, in front of my eyes, on the pavement. I see it, I look at it, but really can’t do anything about it. The night screams. I need to close the window. I hope I will not wake up again.