From medieval times
Romani women
Peering at palms
Some silken soft
Fewer worn and callused
Mapping wet tea leaves
Extracting colorful dyes from
Precious saffron
Strong spices
Local flora, used to
Embellish wood chips
Painted arcane symbols
Touched by the questor’s hands
Anxiously listening to
Forthcoming flutterings
Struggling to earn a few coins
That will stay sewn
Into the hem of the skirt
Lined with tiny mirrors
Reflecting jakhalo
Whether the Evil Eye
Deliberate or accidental
Part of the colorful clothes
An Eastern European version
Of the sari once worn
Before driven from the homeland
Into a freezing diaspora
Scattering all over the world
Some unluckily becoming slaves
Feeding the maw of
Greedy jaws
Until desrobireja
Emancipation
In the 19th century
Freedom once again
To travel the muddy roads
Never escape, though,
From need and someone else’s greed
Saving those few coins of comfort
In a romanticized job
With longer hours
Than nine to five
I, no better than my ancestors
The working poor
Trying to stay alive…
© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: A Chance Meeting with a Fortune-Teller, Adrien Moreau 1834-1906
