In & Out the Grey Empire

Day 1: Saturday, September 21, 1991

The plane finally breaks through the stratospheric snow field and descends on Moscow International Airport. Moskva! It coasts down the runway, and then past a nondescript terminal about the size you would expect in Iowa City – the first indicator that this is indeed another world… Off the ramp and down corridors that advertise Paloma Picasso and the same luxury lizards seen in every other international airport in the world, corridors that look relatively new, only one or two security people hanging around, gangly, fresh-faced recruits in khaki, down to the visa control.

Announcement

For those who are interested in the Reluctant Capitalists series, please check http://rascalndear.blogspot.com.

Grim Fairytales

In a kingdom
not so far away

There is a brown-haired girl
whose locks are dyed golden
since the age of six
to match her bleached-blonde mother.

In-flight Entertainment

a child shrieks me awake

the thought of poets rumbles
in the aftermath of tea & danish,
absorbed by the quality of this or that
divinely difficult form;
seductive father slips quickly into
a plain brown wrapper amid
tickets, torn notes & grocery receipts