DANIEL BLISS

Other Side of Checkpoint Charlie

Two Euro and sixty cents to get us across Berlin
to a Friedrichshain basement, where a piano

is played out of tune, and a guitar
missing the E string is strummed,

enough melody for lips soaked
in Weisse to stumble over lyrics.

Four a.m. train back to Wedding
so empty we wonder why time runs

through morning. We uprooted ourselves
for here and now, to find glory days,

promise of cheap rent and starving
artists, few years left before Berlin

becomes Brooklyn. On the walk
back from the U-Bahn, our eyes

just awake enough for one more drink.
Over whiskey sours, we promise

maybe we’ll make it.

Daniel Elias Bliss holds an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan and is a PhD Candidate at Oklahoma State University. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Brussels Review, Pinhole Poetry, the Bicoastal Review, League of Canadian Poets, Blood and Bourbon, BarBar, and many others.