A Poet Recalls Odessa

NO MORE

No more crowding those Kiosks
That look like guard towers 
Protected by hard currency
And the insect eyes peering out of them
Human eyes preying off their own kind
No more tram drivers drinking their coffee
While you wait for hours to get home to your child
No more swarming in the market
Having to spit out rancid cheese in front of the woman selling it
No Christ to toss those thieves out of the temple
The temple has been a ruin for centuries
It is a time of barbarian hordes
No more running into the drug store to face empty shelves
And even emptier stares
From shop girls in white smocks polishing their nails
No they haven't seen vitamin C for years
No more going to the hairdresser
Ashamed of a sore or welt that is erupting from your skin
What's wrong with your insides?
No more murderous clenching of the buttocks
In freezing temperatures in the outhouse
While you clench your jaws
Trying to free your body of the shit
Of one of the rottenest systems on this earth
No more being spied upon by quick-change artists
Posing as doctors and as comrades
Taking furtive looks at your ass
To see if it's worth the trouble
To sign the form
No more being forced to wear your mother's starched uniforms
After she was left to dry out on radiation machines
No drunken next-door neighbor mafia cut throats
Threatening to kill one another
Circling like beasts over the spoils of spit and cum
Running down the torn slip of a wife whose time has come
To pay back the boss
No more having your daughter forced to listen to the bird's song
Of redemption after the tearing out of their hair
No more shivering and body curling into heat that fades
Like a distant horizon as the radiator goes dead
No more waiting for the miracle to happen
The airlift from the civilized world to put you out of your misery
In a mud hole of corruption and indifference
No more sharing of communal kitchens and toilets
With lives so battered and betrayed there isn't enough
Hope to light a candle
No more intrigues by businessmen over visas
That can be purchased under the counter
No more hope for us...

William Cody Maher
Odessa, 1992
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