I gave birth on a hard-backed chair while my husband
wrote his manifestos on celibacy. — Sonya Tolstoy

A stowaway in the hurly-burly,
I hold the subway strap, struggle
for balance.

Where have you taken me?
Pulled from the library
because I cut pages from—

He made me read his wretched diaries.
Brothels, gypsy women. In a stone city
with mushniks dressed as gentry.

Give me steaming coffee!
I would go back to green willows
& lime trees in spring

& Lyovochka scribbling notes.
Anna: her pale head, crushed like a rosebud.
I copied the manuscript seven times.

New York, sleek & fast. In Central Park,
I sit on a bench, teach a stranger
an occasional Russian verb.

Coffins, large and small, priests, incense.
Some days, I can’t remember their names.
No one believes me.

At night the city, a vast cathedral—
He fled in an open carriage,
died at the stationmaster’s house.

In a room with yellow flowers,
I read Akhmatova.
Would she have understood me?

Some days I think: Utopians,
what a tiresome breed—

Joan E. Bauer is the author of two poetry collections, The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008) and The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021). She worked as a teacher and counselor and now co-hosts the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series in Pittsburgh, PA. Her new volume, Fig Season, is forthcoming from Turning Point in 2023.