Terrible Things Are Happening . . .

by Maureen N. McLane March 17, 2008

Terrible things are happening

in Russian novels!

Just yesterday I heard

in the café

of two peasants, long friends,

one in sudden possession

of a watch

hanging

from a gold chain

which so disturbed his compadre

he stole

upon the other unsuspecting, prayed

to god

and slit his throat, fleeing

with the watch—

and that’s not the worst of it!

Just yesterday my love and I too

had not exactly a “fight”

but a “reckoning”

perhaps, or no—a

“conversation” which opened the ocean

of grief

and now she is in another city

perhaps crying

and not because of Russian novels