Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (13) - Flipbook - Page 11
THE OLDEST
by MP Powers
From a distance, it could be anything
from an overgrown mausoleum
to a blue elephant raging in a garden.
This is the oldest apartment building on the street.
This building was here before flush
toilets were invented.
It was here when that madman
with the funny
little moustache turned its radios
into earthquakes.
It even remembers the first world war,
those families torn from her belly
and dragged off to Siberia,
remembers the ear it grew, its papered
walls trembling with intrigue
and shotty electricity.
This building remembers, remembers
even the nothing
years, the sunlight swept under the rug,
the old woman in classy old woman’s
clothes stepping onto a windy balcony.
This building’s balconies are always
windier on the north side, where
delivery trucks grumble and drunks
with pushcarts piss in blue shadow.
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