(Click on the title to view the whole piece)
 

Exhumations
 
I've come to understand that wanting something is having as much of it as you'll ever have.
 
John Palcewski

 

Lenin Redux
 
In the middle of the night, journeying through a light, agitated sleep, I awake. Squeakings. Rattlings of chains. Fortunato lives yet! Shivering in pajama tops, my feet cold in cold slippers, sans eyeglasses, I steal back to the kitchen, turn on the light. The rattling comes, desperate now, from behind the stove. Has he returned to get at the cereal for a last supper? What is the pain-crazed creature thinking of! I search for a pair of pliers. The 20th century is pitiless: I can't risk touching him, for the lice on mice may be as fatal to me as I shall be to him.
 
Jascha Kessler