the trees in the village are leafless
so it's difficult to hide when i'm watching
fedya fedorovich stumbling across the yard
like a communist snail up the dirt hill to the well

muddy flask in his back pocket, long grunts and
sweat puddles on an incomplete shirt.
sleeves rolled up and feeling home, cracked lips
releasing a man's breath up against the metal of a miniature cup

there you go fedya, drink up, i think to myself,
your heart needs the water so that it wouldn't have to pretend
that it doesn't judge a liquid by its transparency, and would you cry,
i wonder, if you found out about the men your wife opens her legs to

she'll find out, you know, she doesn't have to suffer
even though you are polite with her, even when you just returned
from laughing at teenage prostitutes in straw-roof bars
that make up for the lack of marketing with cheap water

in the evening, sitting in your favorite armchair
with gardens visible through the moon-touched windows
with a book open to a fresh page, far beyond the place
that you will ever reach, because you read only in these moments,
you call out to a corrupted ghost that takes hours to form a reply,
the strings of selfish fury drown the reason from your voice
and you stab the woman, naked, cranes with sobbing submachines
make their debut in the morning, chaos sailing out to sea