Two Poems by Sean Edgley

Poetry – Issue 14 | February 2012

Postcard from Belgrade

Београд off-white city of red Cyrillic
Teenagers gather around an oxidizing horse in front of the opera house
Nubile lip gloss street lamps and a girl crossing the square
with hips poised like the centered swivel of scissors

The sky filled with gutters and a Danube that runs on diesel
Down every alley
the stone threat of the gulag
meat hung in windows
tables for one
the sadness of Chinese restaurants
or
The skinhead that walks off screaming into the park
erupting in biceps
descending into the underworld sunset

The police line the avenues in riot gear
anticipating
the end of the football match
blood
and beer

The new money limousine smiles
the gypsy mothers
the hotel room arguments

And one can never be sure what’s going on inside the opera house

Clouds and women in shawls drift
over the Balkan markets
pears in the shadows
of early-morning techno

Birds like Teslan mustaches radiate from the tops of
donated Swiss trams that rattle down the cobblestones

Feral dogs walk me home or to church
forlorn as an Orthodox cross
The NATO-bombed buildings
sag in disrepair
All the while there is a woman in front of the train station
selling pretzels
with no love no bread
no teeth to speak of

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Sean is a native Californian who has spent the better part of his twenties away from the West Coast. He’s currently halfway through the MFA program at City College of New York. You might have heard his work at the Cake Shop and Earshot reading series in Manhattan.

Read our current issue, Issue 14 | February 2012:

Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 14 | February 2012