Husking

By Olga Rukovets

Andrei paints where he won’t go,
hugs me like youth is catching,
smiles loose.

 

His apartment is the green of imported avocados, and his friends are dying one by one,
while a hammer and sickle
bang on his bedroom door.

 

He once hid cigarettes under his bike seat;
now his warden wife hides his bike in our garage,
and he begs to stroll down Brighton Beach
with the seagulls and sunflower seed-spitters.

 

Andrei carves matryoshka dolls from lime wood.
The smallest one is his favorite, the most intricate,
found only after unfurling the maternal layers,
like the husking of baby corn.

 

He’s forgetting the skill of swallowing vodka without wincing,
and now he sips like he speaks,
slow and stuttering,
unsure of what follows.

Published January 2010