Categories: Willawaw Journal Fall 2019 Issue 7

Buff Whitman-Bradley

Looking for Chekhov

Somewhere near Odessa

In 1900, I think it was,

But possibly not,

You know how

In memory’s paper bag

Everything gets jumbled together

And when you smack it with a stick

It all comes spilling out

Willy-nilly and higgledy-piggledy.

Anyhow, somewhere near Odessa

In perhaps 1900 or thereabouts

I boarded a midnight train

My portmanteau stuffed

With collarless shirts

And shirtless collars

One silk neck scarf

And my fine wool suit.

I was hoping, as you might not

Be surprised to learn,

To run into dear old Anton Chekhov

Who, it was rumored,

Frequently frequented

The midnight train running every other day

Between somewhere near Odessa

And somewhere near Moscow

In the neighborhood of 1900-ish.

You see, I wanted to tell Antosha

(If I might be so bold)

How very much I admired

All of his writings

And in particular how the shocking moment

In his story “In the Ravine,”

Soon to be published

(If it was indeed 1900)

When Aksinya pours a bucket of boiling water

Over the infant Nikifor,

About how that soul-shattering moment

Exploded and expanded in my head

Like a hydrogen bomb and its mushroom cloud

Until it became the size

Of all space and time

And how it remains thus within me still.

With no sign of Anton Pavlovich anywhere

I did some asking around and learned

That 1: He spent very little time in Odessa

And 2: He never once traveled on the Gorky Express

Between somewhere near Odessa

And somewhere near Moscow.

Deeply disappointed

I sagged into my first-class berth

With a snifter of brandy

And watched forlornly out the window

As occasional lights in the vast countryside flashed by

And snow began to fall all over Russia.

Somewhere in Moscow

The carriage driver Iona Potapov

Was telling his passenger

About the death of his son

As snow flakes settled into his beard

And tears froze on his cheeks

While the passenger remained oblivious.

Somewhere in Moscow

The exhausted servant girl Varka

Was trying to calm a colicky baby

When finally, desperate for her own sleep

She strangled the infant

Then sank deep into slumber

On a dreamless Russian winter night.

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poems have been published widely in both print and online journals. His most recent book is Crows with Bad Writing. His podcast of poems reflecting on aging, memory, and mortality, “Third Act Poems,” can be found here.