by Jerzy Jarniewicz | Translated by Piotr Florczyk
and began making love so riotously
that the federal bank building shook,
the stock market hit rock bottom
and the brokers howled from inside the fire
that consumed their guts and wallets.
We plundered each other until the walls of
overcrowded juvie detention centers collapsed,
and the avengers with baseball bats came out
and marched toward the ministry of internal peace.
The battalions of riot police scattered,
dropping their shields, helmets, and notebooks,
their black Crown Victorias their only remains.
You straddled me so defiantly that the investors
panicked and began packing their bags
and returned home on budget airlines,
hastily transferring out their Sasnal paintings,
and all the acquisitions of their Vistula mission
(a tenfold price hike
in five years).
I swallowed you like an anarchist, until the gothic galleries
of Target and Costco fell into ruins,
the cast-iron ATMs melted in the walls
of Chase, Citi, Citizens,
Wells Fargo, PNC, U.S. Bank,
Bank of America, State Street, TD, OneWest,
HSBC, Deutsche Bank, SunTrust,
Bank of the West, Umpqua, ING, and Schwab
Jerzy Jarniewicz was born in 1958 in Łódź, where he teaches British and Irish literature at the University of Łódź. One of Poland’s preeminent critics, translators — especially of British and Irish literature — and poets, he contributes frequently to Polish journals and newspapers. He has published more than twenty of his own books and translated more than twenty books.
Piotr Florczyk is an award-winning poet, scholar, essayist, and translator. He was born and raised in Kraków, Poland, and has lived in the United States since 1994. He holds degrees from University of the Pacific (B.A.), San Diego State (M.F.A.), and University of Southern California (M.A. and Ph.D.).