See how a switchboard
downstairs mutters and backs up
past the elevator shaft and the shorthair
insomniac curled up against
an overturned cream-of-buckwheat can
to land upon
the copper contacts of a modem as
a Hewlett-Packard escape key is depressed
initiating severance.
The spoils lay, splattered
clear on silicone, cotton gingham, laminate. Always
another wing to be preened. She punches a second hole in leather, flattening
off an aluminum rivet. An old belt, a cheap Armenian necklace. Topaz dull,
glazed with Aquaphor residue, silver-alloy leakage. It drops
onto a nightstand—beside a stuffed macaw—eye-sockets
lopsided, heat treatment vinyl and taxidermy brandings terminating
like a doorhinge. Past the molded drywall, she reasons,
was a carpenter’s kopek nested
among cedar trimmings.
Beyond the half-drawn kitchen window, a faceless
Volga
idles under a lone elm.
A combine limps forward, razoring
deep into another row of millet.
It was the summer when T-72s smoldered.
The pensioner rubber-stamped over
the lease must have also
tumbled forwards with a sheaf of
rubles into the
grasp of a amber-black-red
God.