The Empress Anastasia in New York

the empress anastasia in new york

Jan Clausen

Anastasia was long rumored
to be the only member of
the Russian imperial family
to escape execution
by the Bolsheviks.
 

1.

it has begun
the rain

the rain-
shaped sleep
of women who nod in doorways

dreaming of good times
bars and indian
summer
 

2.

in the dream
picture it is
august i am
standing on the grass
beside blue water
i am sixteen
full of zen and
existentialism
acid lust wearing
a two piece
bathing suit i
had my body then
browned, frowning
bored as havana
before the revolution
 

3.

in my mother's house there are
shelves well stocked with
cans, mixes, paper products.
dreams of land. dreams
of flight to the country.
these white-skinned dreams
of cities without color,
catastrophes we do not name,
these dreams of dreamless sleep,
remembering nothing.
 

4.
she hid joints of mutton
beneath her skirt
her pockets bulged
pounds of butter
whole hams in her suit-
case the good bitter
taste of real coffee
in her mouth she roamed
streets freely
the soldiers never
caught her the jews
trooped off to treblinka
 

5.

in vietnam arthritis
is common due to
months years spent crouched
in damp bomb shelters

and i remember my
mother's soft
face skin with the
fallout scare
shelter with the
shelves lined with
canned peaches
jugs of water
the nuclear family
in the atomic age and
SAC is in the air

the bay of pigs cuban
missile crisis got stuck in my childhood
throat my mother
moved the iron
back and forth she
listened about suez
on the radio

and mother still writes how she
hopes, keeps her shelves
stocked, how she helps
these expatriate vietnamese
who can't find jobs
in their adopted country
 

6.

please give me a little piece
of meat for
i cannot eat your bread
your unhulled rice

for i am a princess
in my own right
country

my grandmother's face
was famous
in the nineties
(and castro hid
in the mountains
the jungles covered
ho chi minh
and mao is whispered
change from out of the north
and lenin rode east
in a sealed train
and iskra means
a single spark
can start a prairie fire)

and we came
unto neon
dollar signed
miami
 

7.
the years
her mother singing
in her hair

you are the rightful
empress
anastasia

but she wakes in nightmare
screaming this word
"pretender"

mother
what really happened
in that cellar
 

8.
the streets get colder
she grows more weary
of lies, potatoes,
her mother
still mourning the tsar.

her room looks out
on an airshaft. the carpet
is worn. the bronx
is burning. she never saw the neva.

she pawns the last
of the icons.
 

9.
in spring she crosses
over, joins
the resistance.

10.
this november
city is up
tight. in midtown
the ibm selectrics
have been bolted
to the desks
of secretaries
who are afraid, now
to change jobs.
the druggists refuse
to fill medicaid
prescriptions.
a man has been shot
for going
over the turnstiles.

we slept overnight
on long island,
all the way out.
i saw each grain
of sand a different
color, stuffed shells
in my coat. i walked
as before toward rain
down a beach shining
white through the storm,
watched the tide
turn once.

locked into the city,
i plan to quit my job.
i must get a jacket
with a working
zipper, call
the exterminator,
have a gate installed
on the fire escape
access window.

(Thanksgiving, 1975)

Jan Clausen writes poetry, fiction, and critical prose. She is the author of a book of poems, After Touch (Out and Out Books, 1975) and "The Politics of Publishing and the Lesbian Community" (Sinister Wisdom, no. 2, 1977). With friends, she edits Conditions, a magazine of women's writing with emphasis on work by lesbians.