by Lucinda Kempe
Why had I bought this Cossack rip-off, this fur hat so unlike the real Russian ushanka? I hate that image of Putin bare chested on a horse as if he had a cock bigger than that animal. I can’t go back to the Soviet Union; no back in the USSR; no homeland; no village vodka drunk with my aunts and uncles; no kisses with sweet Russian red lips. If only I could go home to die like Navalny; be gulag-ed like Solzhenitsyn; or be muzzled like the press while here I am an exile making believe I am an American girl who loves life without shackles, which I do, but I love the old country—she doesn’t love me anymore. Mother Russia is tattooed on my skin, inked inside my veins, and when I speak, she whets my saliva with exsanguination—poor Mother Russia’s blood pooling on the basement floor, blood from Czar Nicholas II, his wife and five children, shot at Yekaterinburg, shot then bayoneted and their bodies burned with acid then dumped down a deserted mineshaft. I long for the blood-soaked shores of the USSR because anything is better than this pale US of A imitation like this cheap ushanka I hate as malevolently as Ivan Ilyich hated Praskovya Fyodorovna before he died.
Lucinda Kempe’s work is forthcoming in Gargoyle, Salvage (China Mieville editor), the McNeese Review, SoFloPoJo, Unbroken Journal, Bull, Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, and Centaur, among places. Her work has appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50(2018, 2019, 2020) and nominated for Best Microfiction (New FFR 2025). Her chapbook “Pretty Girl” is making the rounds. You can find her here: lucindakempe.substack.com.
Photo Credit: Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
