M.P. Powers

The Oldest

From a distance, it could be anything
from an overgrown mausoleum
to a blue elephant raging in a garden.

This is the oldest apartment building on the street.

This building was here before flush toilets.

It remembers the First World War,
the forced labor camps down the street,
when that madman
with the funny mustache turned its radios into earthquakes.

This building remembers the families
that were torn from her belly
and dragged off to Siberia,
never to be heard from again.

Cryptic bloodlettings, narcs with ears of schnauzers,
snub-nosed revolvers
hidden under fruit bowls
the papered walls trembling with intrigue
and shotty electricity.

This building doesn’t forget; it remembers
even the nothing years
the sunlight swept under the rug,
the old woman in classy old woman’s clothes
stepping out onto a windy balcony.

This building’s balconies are always
windier on the north side
where delivery trucks rumble into the blood-mist
of the dying day and drunks with pushcarts
piss in blue shadow.