The year got started with King Leopold’s Ghost,
About the Belgian monarch who decreed
He owned the Congo. I got so engrossed
In tracking his abominable greed,
And its effects on those who suffered most
That by the end I felt no evil deed
That fiction could invent would further darken
The heart that strolled through palace grounds in Laeken.

Convenience Store Woman, picked up next,
Was ghostly in itself. Narrated by
A character perpetually perplexed
By human interactions, it’s a wry
Outsider’s take on humans: oversexed
And difficult to please. It made me try,
Despite my reservations, to commence a
Liaison with my local Marks & Spencer.