poem of the day 02.10.10

oleg

oleg runs security
where i work

he gets deals
all of the time

he likes to tell me about them.

the shoes he’s wearing
in a store those shoes
would cost sixty dollars
but on ebay, oleg bought them
for twenty.

the belt
the flashlight
forty dollars
and fifty dollars respectively
but oleg only paid
thirty for the whole set

he buys movies online too.

oleg can get five movies
for nine dollars on ebay

russian movies

imports

in the stores he’d pay
nearly fifty bucks for the whole lot

there’s some american stuff thrown in
like this movie with stallone
where he’s boxing
a big blonde guy in moscow

i try to tell oleg that the move is rocky iv
but he doesn’t believe me

is new, he says.

oleg likes basketball
he loves the knicks
and he thinks that
i love basketball, too
because i can talk a good game
about basketball

i can talk a good game about anything
because my old man forced me
to be well rounded.

every few minutes
oleg comes over to my desk
to tell me about last night’s knick’s game.

he gives me a play by play breakdown.

i pretend to pay attention
while i read the new york times online.

oleg knows when
the next knicks game will be.
it’s going to be this friday night.

will i be watching? he asks.
maybe, i tell him.

then oleg walks away

only he doesn’t stay gone for long.
he’s like a lingering cough

in a few minutes he’s back
telling me all about the uniform
he bought on ebay for seventy bucks

the same uniform he’d have
to pay one-hundred for
at the police uniform store.

oleg stands in front of me
until i look up and nod at his uniform

then he starts telling me about
his stamp collection
and how cheaply he can get old stamps
over the internet as well.