mauerpark

We bought three bikes
between us at the
Mauerpark market. Disco-wheels,
for Arielle (that small lycra-aqua
number with a yellow Klingel), the
grey for twenty-five euro (Tom’s)
and the black to be christened Elvis
(or Rhett, or Hildegarde, or Jet – you
get the idea…)

Caitlyn comes in with the ladder.
It is the end of a Sunday kind of Sunday.
We cook rice noodles, speechless from the light.
The city is opening up like a letter.

We walked, and pushed and elbowed and
Verzeihung-ed our way through the tight aisles.
Karaoke was there we later heard, on the
tiered concrete seating. But you had to know
the words. Saara queued for Gözleme, while
behind glass the grandmother rolled
white across flour, rolled it thin and flat
and whiter and dry, and they brushed it
with oil and laid it cooking on the
hot, convex cooking disc.

The fairy lights don’t look glitzy
and the other windows are wide open
letting the night in. All the heating is off.
We are hopeful for consistency, and it
is nice to spend a day with people.

White enamel swans for ears. Caitlyn found
printing blocks, made the words süß eben
for five euro. We hurried to the café near
Kastanienallee. Sat in very bunt chairs, watching
waffles drift past supporting clouds of ice-cream.
We appreciated the tea-towel of the Danish driver.
In the toilets I wondered if people try
to steal the furniture here. We are simply
astounded. We repeatedly are. The man with the
child with the pretty-messy hair buys cakes
from the women selling cakes and jewellery.

Markus pots the plants on the
dining room table. We use metho
to make the aqua on Disco-Wheels
even more like stretchy hot-pants.
In our bedroom the hyacinth smell
grabs at us with delicate fingers.

The printing blocks man
also sells a large tatami. Lived in Japan.
Eating the work of the old woman’s
rolling, we see a dog in Polizei harness who
frets and darts, is unbefriendable, then disappears.
We walk, and then plan a Fahrrad picnic. We
will ride home through the Tiergarten, through
Alex, and through the rest of Prenzlauerberg.
We will film – camera like a necklace – as
we swerve and catch patches of gorilla flowers
coming up anywhere. Happiness is politically
questionable, so we call it ‘sky’, and ‘almost-sunburnt’.

Caitlyn takes photos of me as I type.
She takes photos of the tea-lights too, and the
leaves of the chestnut out of open windows.
We were going to buy felt bunny-rabbit ears
so I could pose naked-silly for easter. Disco-Wheels
gets a sign, stands waiting, chewing gum in the Flur.

We rode back along a sloping cobblestone street.
(Clichés are what you get when you don’t focus
on western capitalism, Dirk says.) Tom swerves
and I listen to Elvis’ rusty pedals squeak. I will
sell him back to Igor, when we leave. I got
two pairs of plastic earrings for four euro –
all elegant-trashy for parading in the Kiez
during months turning summer. (There are no
bags, though, for Saara, with short and long handles.)
A Russin sells me a jacket, with army sweater-sleeves.
I’m ecstatic, but the game is nonchalance,
about pretending you don’t mind, when
they know you do, and they appreciate the feint.

We have a lucky bamboo. And the
roses are ending. The light still hangs low enough
for our heads to chime. Later for Dirk and Markus
I’ll play “Business Time” and watch them trying to listen
and maybe laughing. Walking around in white
fisherman’s pants, Caitlyn is beautiful.
Says the sky is just like times at the promontory.

(I can’t empty out this day enough!
I want to squeeze it like the sellers
of orange juice for one euro. I want to
squash it into the fresh waffle-cone of
this poem. I want to remember that there’s
a difference between tired and surrendered.)
Caitlyn says it seems like there hasn’t been
a Sunday for years. And I haven’t
smiled at sunburn and found it pretty
since longer than my nose cares to remember.
Like a definition fell out of this water-colour sky
in the shape of people, a park, a ritual.
Some big on-going, intentional accident.
The Dutch give three kisses, the Fins, two.

You can hear dogs barking in the Hof below.
They fixed the elevator Friday last week.
I refuse to count days. And soon we will eat
potato gratin and wonder about the Krise.
Arielle and Dirk are still not home.
A man made pom-mes chips on the edge of the stalls.
He danced like a mad man, fried oblong wares
in his molten wok, on a cardboard-box stove.