I’m getting ready to start a short story. Can you believe this? Fiction! If I was a skilled fiction writer, maybe I could even turn the idea into a novel…but seeing as how I haven’t written fiction since 10th grade, I’m not going to bite off more than I can chew.

The story takes its theme from Maxine Kumin’s poem, Purgatory:

And suppose the darlings get to Mantua,
suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin
with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a
displeasing cockerel, there’s egg yolk on his chin.
His seedy robe’s aflap, he’s got the rheum.
Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eye.
Another Montague is in the womb
although the first babe’s bottom’s not yet dry.
She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse
who dares to send a smock through Balthasar,
and once a month, his father posts a purse.
News from Verona? Always news of war.
Such sour years it takes to right this wrong!
The fifth act runs unconscionably long.

Copyright © 1965 by Maxine Kumin, from Selected Poems: 1960-1990 by Maxine Kumin. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.