Loser

by Randall Rogers

I told them all in Russia
that I killed two men.
Usually I said this while drinking
and began to cry.
When I agonized and shed enough
tears over my crime
I usually told my drinking companions
it wasn’t true
I didn’t kill two men.
And they always told me
they never believed me in the first place.

Then when I told them at sixteen years of age I got a Native American
girl pregnant and she aborted our
half breed fetus
they didn’t believe me on that one either.
“You? With a woman?” they’d say, shaking their heads.
“No way.”