Ally Malinenko- Three Poems

“I Knew I Was Becoming an American,” Said an Iranian Woman, “When I Wanted to Have Time to Myself.”

Tell me, I ask him,

stretched out in bed.

What does a young American woman look like?

He cocks an eyebrow and

puts down the post sex

glass of wine I poured.

He sighs.

Blonde, he says.

Sunglasses

Yoga Pants

Starbucks coffee in one hand.

Thin, of course.

Of course, I add.

Her cell phone

in the other all the time.

Those thumbs working frantically.

What about an older American woman?

Why? he asks.

I’m just curious, I say,

being myself not young

but not yet that old

Mom jeans, he says.

Midwestern accent

Bad hair.

On her cell phone

all the time.

Those thumbs working frantically.

Lonely? I wonder.

But before I can ask he says,

I don’t know.

I don’t know anything about women

and I don’t know anything about this country.

 Not to Be Happy Is Not Just a Misfortune, It Is a Failure

Smile,

the man

on the subway tells me.

Pretty girl like you,

what you got

not

to be

smiling about?

It’s the least

you can do, he tells me,

For the rest of us.

The Homeless Situation Is a Shameful One for America

It hasn’t been that long that he’s been out here, alone.

He pushes the cart full of dirty cans

onto the subway. It is fall in NYC

and the tourist go quiet as soon as they seem him struggle to get the wheel over

the lip of the train floor before the doors close.

And when he succeeds he lays his head back against the metal

and closes his eyes, weary from pushing and pulling tin.

His hair is long, but not too long

and the dirt under his nails might only be a few

months old.

His sweatshirt is dotted with sweat and beer

and soda stains from tipping over and shaking out

so many aluminum and plastic cans,

full of so much sugar that we pump into ourselves

because we, as Americans, can do whatever we want.

The train lurches and the cart rolls forward

just bumping the pretty blonde in a tight college sweatshirt from Arkansas,

who shrieks

as if it were his hands

his nails

his poverty

and not a plastic

bag full of rotten soda cans

that touched her skin.

Bio: Ally Malinenko has been writing poems and stories for awhile. Occasionally she gets them published. Her first book of poems, The Wanting Bone was published by Six Gallery Press and her novel for children Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb was published by Antenna Press. She lives in the part of Brooklyn the tour buses don't come to.