Snapshots of Prague

by Jack Myers

Immaculate white swans float in the river’s
fishless dishwater like squat question marks.

Under the huge stone buildings,
looking like sunken wedding cakes,
lovers kiss long and slow as if growing
shells of longing over themselves,

as if dreariness decided to imagine them
as pink and purple petals of amnesia
growing out of something long and terrible.

At dinner, a waitress charges me $10
for a bottle of water without blinking,
as if cost could be a ladder out of loss.

Next morning on the tram a well-dressed man
whose eyes are all white gets up.  Then his wife,
who is also blind takes his arm, and they get off.
I close my eyes to feel what it is like to be her
and follow the sound of tapping our way home.

I’ve set the camera to snap a picture of me
under a portico of gods and caryatids.  I have
no idea where I am.  But I could never be from here.
Then again I think, why not?  I’m always tying to catch up to
where I’m at.  I’ve always felt I can’t be where I’m from.