Warszawa 1992

Here's one of the better poems I've written.

Warszawa 1992

The sun is setting the same
as it does in St. Paul, lining
itself up with the spaces
between the bleached buildings.
I sit in a hotel restaurant,
unwashed, with a beer whose name
I can’t pronounce in front of me and two
women whose names I haven’t heard
sitting at my table, their lips
moving soundlessly against trembling
cigarettes. I jaywalked across
twelve lanes of traffic to get here,
sit at this table and try to get
the waiter to understand I want
water only. Six million zlotys
in my pocket and all I want is water.
The woman waiting for me on
the steps of the supermarket six
blocks away runs her hands over bristly
shins and squints. The white-haired
woman across from me asks where I am
from. I lie. In the Stare Miasto district,
the vendors have closed.
Cheap leather and silver stare
back through the front glass at sweating
tourists. I tell the woman how
on the bus I was almost robbed today, show
the bruise, how I pushed past the man,
the bus groaning on in the wrong direction,
the eyes of the driver in his
mirror, watching. We don’t move, we
three. The sun is down but the light
is not gone. Later, I will try
to remember their faces -- the white-haired
one, the one with the wig -- I will try
to bring them up again and their faces
will vanish like smoke.

Jason Miller
St. Paul, 2002