Miss Lenin's Ghost Works in a Call Center

Miss Lenin's Ghost 

takes orders

from Mrs Iolanata 

Podkopayeva, widower

age 85 from Patterson,

New Jersey

and though it all,

naturally, sounds like

babble to me, I think

I know roughly what

they're saying 

Every Da and Horosho 

is haunted by that diaspora

feeling, it pricks my skin

like the tiny needle when

a diabetic checks his 

bloodsugar

Iolanata's family was probably

exterminated or dispersed

during the Iron Curtain days,

she rememebers breadlines 

and gulags

and sickles

and hammers

when she angers an audiobyte

of Kruschev banging his

shoe and screaming

"MY VAS POKHORONIM!"

in front of the UN

plays over and over again

like an typeplayer stuck

on repeat

Miss Lenin's Ghost history

is probably not that

dissimilar, they've both

probably suffered more

than most of us

they came here, to the 

land of the "capitalist pigs"

hoping to find refuge

and they did 

but no one 

told them

that refuge comes

at price

no one told Iolanta that

thirty-five years later she'd be

calling a toll-free telephone

number and ordering cheaply

made clothing at exorbitant 

prices from a catalog that 

comes in the mail,

paying for it with her meager

social secruity income

and maybe she'd go light on food 

this week to afford it

no one told Miss Lenin's Ghost

that she'd be asking one of

her own people, in her

own native tongue

if they want to try this

savings program to claim a rebate

check, that'd probably never 

come in the mail and is

three-quarters a scam

Their conversation went like

this in my head,

IOLANTA: Look what they've done

to us.

MISS LENIN'S GHOST: I know.

Reviews

[Karolina S.]

Very good, I love it! And so true. Refuge does come at a price. I'm also an Eastern European immigrant, so could relate to both sides of this story. Thanks for a great read.