13thWR

PUBLIC GARDENS

On the empty street
filled with May's chocolate mud
while trying to remember
a Billie Holiday tune
and tumbling over the grass
by the Public Gardens
in the city square
brushing a worn, tan raincoat
with your face down
acting cool but really petrified
and in trembling fear
that your ex
would be discovered
with a problematic child
nurturing once unlimited energy
you sit on your luggage
as any vagabond or runaway
there is a thick fog
in the unspoken heaven
knowing in just two seasons
that feeling young is gone
yet not resolutely forgetting
the foul basement corridors
where you once smoked and moaned
together at school lunch
where none of your human traces
remain for length of day
a person you hardly know
under an oblivious sky
waits by inky streetcars
soiled diary in hand
wiping her coiled hair
on a rainy knobbly corner
near the oldest cemetery
by an idle, evasive morning.

AT TWELVE IN BELGRADE

you still want to hear
a bedtime story
and have open arms
to taste all the flavors
from the illimitable cooks
of the kitchen's world.
You imagine a navy tattoo
on your right arm
but outside the door
a bomb goes off,
grazes you,
and you hide
from the open sky.
Fear floods your body,
you don't want to be
disfigured,
not today.

- B.Z. Niditch