Today’s New Verse News: RUSSIA, REMOVED
by Suzanne Morris
Source: Wikipedia
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I am typewriting my version of the recipe for Coulibiac. This hearty main dish has endured since the 17th century and requires a long list of ingredients that I must divide by half whenever I prepare it, for it makes enough to feed a family of Russian peasants after a long day of laboring in the fields. A customized version at hand will save time as I spread a rectangle of dough with salmon, rice, boiled egg slices and sauce redolent of scallions and mushrooms and tarragon then top with another sheet of dough, seal the edges, glaze with raw egg and bake the plump mound to golden brown perfection. In a flood of sympathy for the valiant people of Ukraine, I feel I should omit the note on the origins of Coulibiac. Then I remember how it saddened me when Ukrainians stripped the names of 19th century literary giants such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky from street signs, parks, and public squares: Weren’t they overlooking the deep sense of moral justice that flowed from the pens of these Russian novelists, as warming to the human heart as a fire in the hearth on a snowbound winter’s eve? Who is to say they would not be wielding their pens today to tell the truth of the evil being done in their country’s name, and warn of the dire consequences? ...the worm gnaws the cabbage, but dies before he’s done...
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Suzanne Morris is a novelist and a poet. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and in journals including The New Verse News, The Texas Poetry Assignment, The Pine Cone Review, Stone Quarterly, and Emblazoned Soul Review.