chapter 3
poem
To keep it short. You’re so frightened now you’re shitting in
Your pants. Can we take this up another time?
You feel gagged, and look at how your hands are tied
behind you so you have to cradle the contrivance
with your chin. Boris Leonidovich, have a pleasant meal.
An old camp counselor, a bully Boy Scout grown into
a what? A what?
. . . writing for him on Yagoda-Checkist
checker board, black squares and red, king makers, triple jumps,
a bowl of raspberries lodged in each man’s lap, a rasp
in both voices, a rattle then: Were I to take my pencil up for
the supremist praise, I would speak of him who shifts the
axis of the world and call him by his dobrydawnsong name,
Dzhugashvili
Koba was a nom de guerre, and he darkened eighteen others.
Dzhugashvili only an aubade.
V
The telephone, the book, the pencil, and the bomb.
The horseshoe, the letter Ж, Ap