Jaswinder Bolina

 
 

 House Hunters International
   
  
 They’d wanted the two-story two-bath 
 above the creperie in De Pijp,
  
 though they’d been willing to reconsider
  
 the budget for old-world charm
 and sleek, modern finishes in Zagreb,
  
 a quintessential hacienda in the hills 
  
 flanking Quito, or a lanai shading 
 the Russian district of Phnom Penh, 
  
 but what they’d really, really wanted 
  
 was Prague in a black & white movie
 adaptation of a book about Prague 
  
 in the 70s. They’d even read it in college, 
  
 and they’d known even then they wanted 
 other people’s architecture and pathos. 
  
 They wanted other people’s transit 
  
 and squalor. They’d been prepping 
 for years in unincorporated Atlanta
  
 when a job-call lit up their scopes.
  
 They’d tracked it to this bang-on-budget 
 studio nestled above the ornamental 
  
 fruit stands and decorative geriatrics 
  
 occupying a piazza at the city-center 
 of this other life they’d wanted to wear 
  
 like a pelt. And we watched their wanting 
  
 from a blind we’d erected in our living room,
 and we watched as they waded, timid at first, 
  
 into the liquid crystals of the television. 
  
 Then, more swiftly, their daggers clenched 
 between their teeth, they slipped beneath
  
 its pixilated surface. 
 
 

  

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 House Hunters
  

 From a hill road above the thicket 
 of rickshaws, gelaterias, and brewpubs 
  
 crowding the high street, she caught sight of it 
 at dusk, perched in its flaxen and summer coat: 
  
 the house,
  
 as if lapping from the river, as if a ten-point buck 
 on a shady bank. She choreographed our advance
  
 out of the west, camouflaged in North 
 Face jackets and New Balance sneakers. 
  
 Papa hushed the baby strapped to his chest 
 in a Baby Bjorn. At half a klick, he signaled 
  
 for us to egress out of the realtor’s Citroën.
  
 The elder children knew to hide 
 our numbers in a single file. 
  
 She winked to us once
  
 before cocking her musket, 
 our doting mother,
  
 crack-shot and immigrant on the hunt.
 


  

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