Thursday, April 16, 2026: Tamara Madison's "Time Zones and Soldiers"

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Bio: Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and

Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild

Domestic, and Moraine (Pearl Editions) and Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig). Her

work has appeared in Chiron Review, The Worcester Review, A Year of Being Here, One Art, The

Writer’s Almanac, and many other publications. Her memoir-in-poems, Russian Honeymoon

(forthcoming, Fernwood Press), chronicles the 15 months she spent as a very young bride

as part of a US Information Agency exhibit in the USSR.



Time Zones and Soldiers


In two weeks I have crossed

so many time zones:

European, Pacific, Eastern Standard.

Dazed by weeks of jet leg,

I hardly know where I am.

Now I’m surrounded by so many new faces,

people I’ll soon know well.

I don’t even try to learn their names.

But at Heathrow, I spy Frank Zappa

waiting near us in white bell bottoms,

familiar mustache dripping down his chin.

Pan Am to Moscow.

We arrive near midnight but to us,

it’s yesterday. In the restaurant bar

we meet a man from Nigeria.

He’s my husband’s age. He shows us

his war scars. My husband

has his own war stories to tell

but he keeps them to himself.

The Nigerian is handsome. As we talk,

I don’t yet realize that as a wife

I’m now invisible.

On the flight to Tashkent

(five more time zones)

an Uzbek soldier sits on my right.

He is curious about my Newsweek,

the new president on the cover.

I point to Gerald Ford and say “fool” in Russian.

The Uzbek is shocked. My husband explains

our “tradition” of not respecting our government.

The soldier does not understand.


Our hotel smells of strange spices

and cooking oil. At last, there’s time for sleep.


© Tamara Madison

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