banya world
hot city
banya entrance
On my most recent foray into New York, I was introduced to the world of the Russian banya. Despite the heat wave outside, I was amazed to discover that communal sweating, (in a hot, dark room, full of boisterous Russians who are beating each other with birch branches), is oddly refreshing. After it was all over and we went back out into the fetid Brooklyn night, I felt as if my pores had been thoroughly cleansed by an army of mop wielding nano-dwarves. The polluted air no longer felt so nauseatingly oppressive and I floated back onto the subway in a blissful, body stoned stupor. Check out a real banya blog to get a sense of the kind of atmosphere to expect. I can’t wait to buy myself one of those rakish white felt hats for my next banya visit.
I was jolted out of my thermally induced euphoria, when, as we walked uptown from Delancey St., we hit a dark patch of sidewalk under a burned out street light. Blithely carrying on, we noticed that the concrete underfoot was a bit sticky and strewn with a great many shiny, button-like objects. Then it hit me. . . We were walking across hundreds of lustrous, skittering cockroach carapaces, some as big as baby turtles, teeming across a rank slick of heat fermented dumpster juice. It seemed we had gotten a little *too* relaxed during our banya outing, otherwise we might have noticed our predicament a bit earlier. E-e-e-e-w!
Now I’m back on the West Coast and living in a landscape that resembles something right off the front of a Celestial Seasonings tea box I’m getting ready to take another poetry course with the inimitable Susan Musgrave In preparation, I thought I’d better write a quick banya poem:
Ninety five degrees
in Alphabet City
and she says we’re going to
a steam bath
a *steam* bath, I say?
Yeah, a steam bath, she says
a *Russian* steam bath, as if
nationality mattered and a
“schvitz” will cool us down
and we’re already traversing the
shimmering, simmering fields of tar toward
the F train’s burping burrow, my face all sputtery like a
lard candle, the seething distance mis-
aligned, de-
interlaced
from the tired atomic
firmament
the magnets focusing the world
have melted off their mounts, we
mince
across hot dumpster juice
lapping
at my ankles even
the ghetto palms
have had
enough
folding feathery leaves
in chlorophytic
beseechment
away
from tormenting sun
I see the hole, the sweet sweet hole
of subway deliverance
of fetid dankitude
of stale metal aircon
relief
in the warm electric bosom
of motors
I flop all nauseous and swirly brained
stick to the vinylette like a freshly licked stamp
commemorative Zen, heat stroke edition, anything
could happen to me now, it no longer
matters, I wish this ride would go on for
ever but the alphabet runs out at
“I”
and down the stairs we clang clang clang from
the rusty platform that straddles
the street
with its overarching Meccano legs, a giant spider
ate a Taiwanese freighter, scuttled, I think they call it, ready
to pounce on the kids with the forelocks and bowler hats
running
under a Carboniferous sky
old as amphibians
beneath the sheets of street
heat lightning over Coney Island ozone
tickle of electrified window
screens and
carack carack kablam
the first fat drops
zisching
on the pavement, outside
the bath house
awning now
and thank God
Marina mayfly
flits toward us
all mouse ears and
kiss kiss kisses
the dioxin sweetness
of freshly laundered terry cloth, where
birch branch beaten
mounds of
man meat
quiver under white felt
hats, lost in a haze
of smoked fish and watermelon steam
we head for the ovens
and emerge
once more as
shining ingots
pure, revirginated
and ready
to be defiled
again.
