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Rented Rooms
The house is boiled cabbage
goose fat, gizzard stew, and beets.
Windows steam and simmer,
you can write your name on the glass
winter or summer.
If you can live among rutabaga
or borscht; if pickled eggs haunt your palate
then this house becomes air in your lungs.
The landlady was Polish or Russian;
she spoke with a burly churlish tongue,
she moved like a Turk, her walking cane
was a scimitar. She supped a tarry tea
from a Serbian samovar.
We shared a toilet with a slim man
who was slinky and still in the closet,
he would saucily wink over strong drink.
His lips were rosy not pink. He washed
argyle socks in the kitchen sink.
There were others, they left early
riding pushbikes into the grey streets.
The lady groused, patrolled perimeters,
barged prying hands into private matters.
Hairclips and rubber bands fell from her curlers
as forewarnings and threats.
The Bulgarian or Croatian crone
had broad bad hips and liked me not
for back then
I used a substance to ease my mind.
I would smoke in the shared toilet
leaning my thin mouth through
a small slanty window,
she absolutely knew, and threw
passing daggers
with tightly curled Estonian lips.
We stayed like that for months
until the city regurgitated our lives
once more.
Once more seeking low rent rooms,
from those cosmopolitan guardians
of small city spaces.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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