This town is a dark place

Like a cold rain in Prague

Like a year in Stalin’s gulag

Like the poetics of Bruno Schulze

There is, in the rust belt

A deep strain of suffering

The kind that all our grandparents

Fled Eastern Europe to escape

It seems the American dream

Lasts about a generation

Then becomes the stories

Grampa only told while drunk

When he talked of beautiful places

Of rivers and mountains

That he had to leave behind

If he wanted an actual life

Mark Borczon lives in Erie Pennsylvania. He works as a custodian for a state university. He has written 4 books of poetry and has been published in print magazines and on line. He is 55 years old.