Tonight's Poet Corner: Sonnet Solstice #100
The Soviet Man: A Story in Five Sonnets by Belinda Roddie The Soviet man's hands were tinted blue as he took time in the snow dumping dead in holes after the great Bolshevik coup that painted all the banners crimson red with the Tsar's death. But sympathy took stealth, for revolutionaries donning black could not pity those who once held their wealth in manors. They were killed in each attack upon rich courtyards once teeming with green, now dried and sticky with borgeoisie blood. The man, braving the weather cold and mean, preferred to work away from ragged scud, but he was given tasks more for a dog, digging graves, part of the Soviet cog. When done, he met with an old comrade. Gruff and surly, the comrade still gave him warm tea and dry bread to savor under tough conditions, both their coats and trousers torn. Frost drifted in, and the man's heart would thump loudly from time to time within the dark shadows of his ally's home, and the stump of...