P oetry R epair S hop 1999.09:102
- CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL POETRY
- by new, emerging, and established poets

LAIMA SRUOGINIS
At the Side of the Garbage Truck Living in a Poured Concrete Building Complex in Vilnius, Lithuania
 
 
Gray faces marked their dance as they swung their hips methodically
in the large plate glass showcase window of the United Colors of
Bennetton Store--
a peacock on the Avenue, an overdressed woman picking through cabbages.
 
Gray faces marked their dance, embarrassed, apathetic, or just plain
exhausted--
too many years of deprivation, corruption, indoctrination, pollution,
malnutrition.
They swing their hips dutifully, thrust their buttocks out towards the
gathering few--
their motions strangely slow adrift among the rushing traffic.
 
This is Eastern Europe where a gray doom clings together with coal onto
pedestrian's heads,
fear is carried along on the soles of shoes, pennies counted, bills
stuffed
into an old sock in the back of the underwear drawer. I think, slavery,
glance away.
A begging child presses her face into the window.
 
In one rainbow arc plastic rubbish buckets rise, the heavy dumpster
thuds
to the ground, basket of a hot air balloon, asphalt splinters.
First the children, then the babushkas and young wives, endless weeks
spent in flower print housecoats, glaring, pour an endless rainbow
of egg shell, newspaper smeared with mayonnaise, coffee grinds, and
dust.

Between these concrete slabs - oh - there is fucking, drinking, living,
breeding.
Between these concrete slabs children grow old, men live everlastingly
young,
fountains of alcohol never stop gushing.
Between these concrete slabs women like plush couches hang over huge
cauldrons
of borsch and cabbage soup, the phone rings forever and the gossip is
inextinguishable.
 
At the side of the garbage truck, conversation flows like mayonnaise --
sperm, salty, sticky,
secrets are told, tips exchanged, behind eyes, behind God's back
at the side of the garbage truck we are equal, we belong, we are wanted
our trash flows from us purifying our souls, cleansing us, until the
next bucket fills.
 
People still play honest to God card games here, haven't made way for
computer glitz--
couldn't afford it anyway. Children collect bits of broken colored
glass, prisms flutter,
cats, no better than rats, feed on whatever escapes the garbage truck
eyeing from corners the overburdened tires and rusty wheel wells.
 
Wearing through cotton slippers, they shout to each other in Russian,
Polish, Lithuanian
from windows forced open. An occasional dog howls, varnish in the
hallways never dries,
the paint is leaded. Between these concrete slabs - oh - life never
ceases to be, roles never reverse,
and miracles just never happen.


"AT THE SIDE OF THE GARBAGE TRUCK" originally appeared in "Lithuania: In Her Own Words" (Vilnius, Lithuania, Tyto Alba, 1997). Further information about this book and purchasing details can be found at: http://www.usm.maine.edu/~sruogini/. Used here with permission of the author.

Poem copyright 1999; all rights reserved. (If you wish to copy this poem, please contact its AUTHOR).