F.J. Bergmann’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Meet and Marry a Gorgeous Russian Queen
—a spam subject line
To win her, you must learn the language
of birds. You Google to find out just what kinds
of birds migrate between here and Siberia.
You will build her a crystal castle of salt,
dried from pure, sweet tears that you wept
in disappointment over celebrity porn
viruses and fraudulent penis extenders.
Even on the paid matrimonial websites,
she is the only truth shining among thousands
of false promises like a genuine gold crown
surrounded by rhinestone tiaras—or a shark’s
mouthful of yellowing teeth—and she looks
damn good in those dollar-store bras she bought
with the money you sent her for airfare.
Each successive e-mail has an explanation
for why she still doesn’t have enough for the visa,
like an egg you crack open to find another egg
enclosing still-smaller eggs. The final egg
is Fabergé, with a jeweled window where you look
inside to see a little cottage with a tiny garden
and a couple holding hands. She has a doctorate
in chemical engineering but you assure her
you are completely, totally healthy and drug-
and alcohol-free. Anyway, she’ll never know
if you’re careful to always undress in the dark.
She can cook anything, as long as it’s not lentils,
and you promise she won’t need to cook.
You plan to treat her to McDonald’s at least twice
a week and you’ve got a whole case of ramen
noodles left over from the Y2K stash. You even
hauled last year’s Xmas tree to the curb, adorned
the mailbox with plastic flowers, and swept
the sidewalk in front of the house every day
for a year in anticipation of her arrival.
You decide not to tell her about the foreclosure
until she’s gotten used to the place a little more.
She steps down from her hut on chicken legs
with a faintly amused smile, as it crouches
to take a crap in the next-door neighbor’s yard.
She looks something like her
and you are beginning to wish you’d changed—
or at least washed—your I’m
“Hi there,” you say, with a
is adorable but a bit difficult to understand.
She is saying something about deception; or, more
likely, conception: women always want kids. And
something about Las Vegas, and—you’re pretty
sure about this one—getting a gift horse.
Tags: f.j. bergmann, poetry, there is only one true russian queen and her name is catherine
This was perfect. Thank you! I loved the eggs-as-nesting-dolls and the Baba Yaga reference. And everything else in the poem.
F.J. Bergmann used this very poem to harass another speculative poet, Rose Lemberg, at WisCon 36 two years ago. I am deeply appalled and horrified that it is being published here. The incident is being re-examined and discussed within SFF fandom in the wake of the discovery that WisCon sat on Lemberg’s complaint for 10 months–after soliciting a report from them–and allowed Bergmann to volunteer at registration this year (WisCon 38).
Details of the harassment incident are here: http://radishreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/… (edited link to a screencap at request of the person who posted the letter)
I’ve written about the issue with WisCon in more general terms here: http://radishreviews.com/2014/06/01/wiscon-and-ha…
wow I read your links and did some googling of my own. That’s really fucked up.
Someone could write an interesting paper about people who decide someone else’s art is about them. But here’s a life lesson: everything isn’t necessarily about you.
Wow. The above post is a COMPLETE LIE. I’ve just heard of this and investigated the evidence available on the web. This poem was written *well before* this argument between Bergman and Lemberg, and it’s complete nonsense to suggest that she psychically wrote it ahead of time to harrass Lemberg. It’s sickening that you’re going around the internet spreading these lies.
Good poem. Especially love the imagery.
I absolutely deny that I ever intended to harass Rose Lemberg in any way. These accusations are malicious and not supported by facts, and I am outraged by the actions of those who undertook to publicly defame and harass me. My own take of the events in question is here: http://fibitz.livejournal.com/6742.html
I found the poem intriguing. I’ve seen this scenario play out before in the lives of others around me. You really captured the essence of the mail-order love scam.
Love this poem. Am unnerved by this comment section. There seems to be a history to those links that those links don’t adequately explain.
Love it!
I’ll say this – I was not present for the events in question. However it seems that the poem deeply offended more than a few people at the reading Natalie discusses.
Regardless of whether that was the author’s intent, it happened. And when that happens – when you are accused of harassing someone – the best you can do is say your sorry, try to remedy the situation, and move on. If you want the debate to die down, if you want Rose to forgive or forget (as unlikely as that may be, given the rather tangled history you two appear to have), then it seems that the best thing to do would be to stop seeking publication for this poem. I know that has to be hard, as it’s something you undoubtedly put much work into – and from what I understand, it’s part of a series – but by continuing to find places to publish it, you’re basically saying you aren’t sorry for your actions, for how you affected another person. You’re rubbing salt in the wound. And you’re guaranteeing that this conversation keeps coming up, again and again.
“when you are accused of harassing someone – the best you can do is say your sorry”
I think you skipped a step here.
Yeah, I read the links and having zero background or affiliation either way, I really failed to see how the poem was construed as harassment based on the information the links provided. I agree there seems to be some underlying backstory/ history/ infighting. All context aside, I think it's a lovely poem.
Is the screen-cap-rich internet fighting part of the piece??? IT IS SO GOOD
MORE ON-THREAD BATTLES
Next time, instead of everyone breaking all of their ankles and looking so, so beautiful in this cave, let’s make the audience the jury so we can decide who takes home the golden chalice full of luscious apples and who will be pelted with spoiled fruit AND THEN BEHEADED or whatever’s legal these days it’s hard to say
Oh my endless days.
Even without reading the history behind the the reading of the poem (which should be taken seriously, as it's harrassment), I found the piece deeply offensive in and of itself.
It cut close to the bone as I'm a second generation Thai immigrant, which is another nation portrayed in popular Western culture as a source of so-called mail order brides whose main story is their heartless deception of stupid white Western men.
There's nice imagery and the voice is charming. At the same time, this poem doesn't actually say anything new about the experiences of immigrant women because it's a dressed up Russian bride joke. Let's look at the tropes:
The Mail Order bride:
– from Eastern Europe
– not as hot as in the photos
– siphons off money from Westerner
– constantly lies to the man
– lol unintelligible foreigners
– only using western man to presumably get out of her home country and then… stuff? we only see her through the eyes of said western man, so.
The western man:
– some pathetic shitbeard scrub, because that's apparently the only kind of dude who'd fall for these scams and marry someone coded as an undesirable, alien fraudster.
I get that it's maybe meant to mock the western man but it's still done in a way which denigrates immigrant women. What's funny or new about any of that? How is it any different to the usual bullshit hurled at immigrant women? It's still trivialising, it's just a bit prettier.
For poems which describe diverse experiences, publications like Stone Telling (edited by, yes, Rose Lemberg and Shweta Narayan) and poets like Warsan Shire ('Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth' is highly recommended) are interesting and thoughtful.
I second Pear’s comment.
Yep. Agreed on all counts- can't see how the poem is offensive, can't see how the poem is harassment, not sure that the comments section of an unrelated site is the place to air complicated and lengthy backstories of grievance.
The poem is offensive because it perpetuates stereotypes about immigrant women, particularly those from Eastern Europe.
This study outlines why that matters in terms of intersectional feminism and popular culture, with examples of so-called Mail Order Brides represented in ways which are actually subversive and funny: http://www.academia.edu/1886523/Mail-order_Brides…
I've read that study, and while I think it's not particularly well-written, I think I've worked out what it's trying to say. Briefly: I find the poem a surreal and quite beautiful comment on something I think is an incredibly sad and difficult societal set-up. I don't think the poem is funny, really, or even particularly subversive: I suppose, to be honest, I don't find the topic very funny or subversive. I don't think it's a societal set-up that's good for anyone.
Well, I found the poem funny — “deception; or, more/likely, conception” cracked me up. I don’t see anything harassing in the poem, but even if it a subtle jab at some person, one satirical poem hardly constitutes harassment.