HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for the Toys & Games Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some of our shortlisted contributors the chance to be published on our website. Below is one of the pieces we loved. Keep an eye on our website for more great writing like this, in the run up to the release date of Toys & Games…
The Cold War Games
Jerry T. Johnson
it was late October 1997 in Moscow
my tour of duty in Russia was winding down
my boss and I just finished dinner at a restaurant
positioned just four miles from the Kremlin
after dinner we sipped vodka and talked
about fast-moving sports cars
the car he owned was very sporty,
it was a slick silver American model
he left at home in the USA because
it was much too costly to bring it into Russia
it would take too much money to retrofit it
to meet requirements for vehicle operation
plus he was afraid to have it stolen
stolen like many other fine western cars
owned by many other westerners spending time
building factories, refurbishing warehouses,
furnishing distribution centers, buying delivery trucks,
installing computers, configuring software,
counting Russian rubles, counting Czech crowns,
counting Polish zlotys, counting Hungarian forints,
wherever the former Soviet Union abode
there we were with all our technical toys
playing round after round of business roulette
deluded into thinking that the Cold War games were over
Jerry T. Johnson is a new writer to the Connecticut/New York area. He began writing in the early 1990’s, had one poem published and then took a 21 year hiatus to pursue corporate work overseas. In the spring of 2013, Jerry restarted his writing career. Since then his poetry has appeared in several literary journals and he published his first self-published poetry chapbook, “Good Morning New Year!” In addition to his written work, Jerry does poetry readings in a variety of venues in the New York City area. Jerry currently lives in Danbury, Connecticut with his wife Raye.