DAN MANCHESTER

To Madison, WI

recto:

Three village elders pose unsmiling in a shaft of sunlight, the hint of mountains dusting the background. To the right, over the lone woman’s shoulder, one can just make out the edges of a graveyard, the dimpled tops of miniature mosques-cum-mausoleums gleaming in the sun.

verso:

You asked in your last email

what I meant when I said

the call to prayer’s forever after

to be associated with a man

selling milk. Well:

when it’s screamed

several times a day

in the courtyard below

the apartment, a mosque

around the corner, & your Russian’s

passable at best, there’s a fine line

between Allah akbar & malikoh.

To Pomfret, CT

recto:

Underground bazaar at the intersection of Prospect Chui and Manas; passing pedestrians and/or shoppers blur both the fore- and background in woolen shades of gray. Above them hangs a single ochre bulb. Visible between the legs of the woman third from the left, in neat focus, sits a single, squat plastic fir tree rung with garland and a string of white lights. The sign reads 85 som.

verso:

What your haiku said:

shit. Holidays are over-

rated. (My Russian [ ] sucks.)

(—for BD)

To Fargo, ND

recto:

Bronze statue of Manas (epic hero, father of the people, Central Asian Paul Bunyan) stripped to the waist & carrying fireman-style his horse (epic equine heroine, mother of the people’s horses, Central Asian Babe) before unnamed governmental building (squat and cement) and a cloudless slip of sky.

verso:

Turkmenbashi, regional neighbor

& a complete crackpot, says

Read my book and go to heaven.

We can only hope

someday to blurb so well.

To Baton Rouge, LA

recto:

A woman in the middle distance bends to look at a parti-colored row of shoes laid out on a low shelf poking from the open doors of a freight container deep within Dordoi Bazaar. Both of the card’s borders are lined with the containers, stacked three high in parallel rows, lane upon lane, straight through to the card’s top and bottom border. If not for the shoes, the blur of shoppers and vendors, one could not help but wonder as to the absence of forklifts, stevedores, freighters passing by unseen.

verso:

Women’s Day dinner inexplicably

full of Eliot’s cat poems, we sit listening

to rhymes only Andrew Lloyd Weber’s

ever really cared for, delivered

from the mouth of another

unknown ex-patriot, we hardly notice

she’s come in, small & dirty, wrapped

in pink terrycloth & a scarf. Only

when the bartender picks her up

& hustles her out to the sidewalk

we realize she’s there

at the table edge, palm empty

as her stomach opened to each guest

in turn. The man across from us

leaned over to say There’s more

come spring, when the rivers let go

& the winter stores run dry.

Something about this brought you

to mind. Hope you’re well

& seeing past the traffic.

To New York, NY

recto:

Leftover Lenin statue, having formerly stood before what is now the National History Museum presiding over the wide central square, it now stands behind the museum, across Abdumomunova from Parliament. His huge bronze right arm is raised as it so often is in salute, in recognition of the future, of change, ready to strike down a blow. Lenin’s arm is said to point across the street at the legislators busy crafting the new country’s laws but the joke on the street has it if you truly follow the arch of his fingers and the flick of his glare, you’ll find yourself staring not toward Parliament but to the building beside it, the one housing American University – Central Asia.

verso:

I’ll tell you now: her name’s

Vika & she was beautiful.

Only later I figured the word out

as protest. I never met her.

It seemed slight somehow,

bright & shiny, another sound

as distraction. Every interview

began with that same word

I wouldn’t use. I shook

every hand, turned down

offered vodka. It didn’t rain

that week. They said, Write her obit

& I did as I was told.

A teacher beloved & young

in the backseat, dead.

Her taxi ran through a ditch

into a tree by the airport.