Pittsburgh Poem

On Sarah Street, on the South Side, 
the old woman stands with her broom, imagining
the air full of lug and swish from the steelworker’s boot,
armies of gray lunchbuckets grace her thoughts
as she sweeps with the part of her that still believes;
sweeps while her sister makes paska and horseradish with red beets,
sweeps away the stains of a dead husband and a disappointing daughter.

She thinks of the dark well of J&L, how it sifted down to nothing,
the mill’s hole of a mouth that ate full years of her life,
nights she pulled her husband from Yarsky’s bar across the street,
him smiling like a bagful of dimes, half a paycheck spent,
the whole time, soot covering their clothes, the car, the windowsills
like disease, someone else’s hands.

She holds tight onto the good times, the new green velour couch,
Saturday walks to the Markethouse for fresh red cabbage and greens,
trips to the Brown & Green store for new T-shirts, South Side windows
brimming taffeta and satin on the way to Mass at St. Michael’s,
when the world was gleaming and available for one glorious day.

Now shadows angle across her print housedress and she holds tight 
to her broom, hears her sister primping in the kitchen, smells the pea soup
with sauerkraut, the homemade mushroom gravy for perogies, she thinks
of the ten years since her husband died, of her daughter who calls 
on holidays, she stands on her concrete lawn,
taking care of something invisible, the listless air,
her life.

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