Monday, January 25, 2010


Good Girl.


I hear her voice outside my door 
the sound creeps under, "kurva", she whispers
scared someone will hear her, most of all me.
I hear her. I think she hates herself.

In the morning she sweeps the stairs for a rent reduction
and her husband drinks burčák from 8, he fights
downstairs, outside. Sometimes she bakes bread
for the caretaker, whose wife is useless.

She walks to Delvita, comes out laden
with bags, sits to catch breath and rest her feet. I wonder
if being fucked at life gives
you fat ankles. I watch her from my balcony.

She thinks I am reading, Seifert, but I am watching
always watching.

I keep myself to myself, I smell the gulas in her kitchen
she cooks daily. Her children fight but

her husband says nothing. She raises her voice and I think, yes
she is not happy. My mouth waters. I will eat out tonight.
I love the men I sleep with, sometimes briefly, but the love is there
and it's real. She brings in clothes from the balcony line
cracks a shirt in the air. A whip for his back.
Dropping pegs into a tub on the floor she curses her life. Under her breath.
Tomorrow when she slices onions, I will cry for her.



kurva, burčák

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And this decisively and satisfyingly answers the question I asked in the previous post.

Perhaps it is a male thing, but I would have used the word "with" in the last line yet I accept the validity of your use of "for". My thought would have been that, in coping with her arid life, peeling onions would be the only time she would/could let her feelings out without seeming weak. You view that she needs someone else to cry for her is a very powerful image.

Pesk said...

Thanks J - I don't think she cries, this housewife. She feels angry I suspect, that she is the only one who is moral and good and so is furious at her awful life which she does not deserve. I think if she knew the whore cried for her, she would be outraged. Poor woman.

Jen said...

Magnificent, and a bonus: now I know why my ankles are fat! ;)