Karen Kovacik

I don't know how abc stands regarding copyright when we post others poems here ... but as andrew o donnell is doing it, he's put me in the mood, so I'm posting one of my favourites. We can always take them down if complaints come in cant we? anyway, have a look at this... it's one of my faves, cant remember which website it came from.

Self-Portrait in Warsaw, With My Least Favourite Colour

Warsaw was the earnest newsreel
that everyone talked through.
Warsaw was sexy train tunnels
and 40-watt streets.
On New World Avenue,
I hunched in milk bars
like a double agent
and swilled brackish soups
of cucumber or kapusta,
then washed down a sour avalanche of rye
with compote sloshing
its saucer like dishwater.
I coughed imperfect verbs
on my fingers, while matrons
in prewar silver minks
elbowed past me onto tramcars.
I stole slices of window
and watched the world turn
to limestone. Stalin wanted Warsaw
full of ten-foot hunks:
steelworkers and miners
with dreamy granite eyes
aimed at a socialist future.
Forget neon Hollywood
and its stupid rosy tints!
Warsaw lurked in the backseats
of cabs and smoky salons
where poets with gray matter,
prematurely gray,
kissed me in every dialect
of tobacco and rewired
my accusative and dative.
Warsaw was silver Wyborowa
whose caps I could never unscrew
fast enough. Virile plurals
and feminine endings.
A city of lavender pigeons
strutting for new mates.
City of aphrodisiac kasha
and noirish eel.
City I still struggle to capture
in charcoal. Whose churches
I can never make pregnant.