* * *

Ukraine most likely can no longer be saved,
but you can always save an individual Ukrainian,
I think, filling out the forms for the tests
and pet boarding for my cat Sani (full name Sanitar, that is Medic),
calling an Uber to the animal hospital,
remembering the streets it’s driving down,
a black dot moving along my screen,
better to have my left hand on the wheel and right on your thigh,
and different streets — in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv,
and a lightly erotic photo session in the Kremenets ruins,
and the Donetsk coffee shop with its book exchange,
the owner of which went on to lead an underground squadron,
better for me to smuggle you through Poland in the trunk of the carm,
but now you need to be saved from something else entirely,
what the fuck, the war’s at the door and this person is still
sick, still going crazy, trying to get off mephedrone,
better if you’d gone and signed up, no time for self-harm in the trenches,
lord, no, what am I saying, better the evil you know,
as if there’s anything left anymore that we don’t know about evil,
which ward will they take you to, will they let you keep your phone,
the military operation in the east definitely won’t reach you,
until the old Dnipro runs with blood instead of water,
but what if they open another front from Crimea,
Sanya, Sanya, my shelter cat, dark with white under-fur,
if you can’t save a person at least you can save a cat.

Dmitri Kuz’min


***

When they came for the postmodernists, we stayed silent:
We were postmodernists

Nikita Sungatov

***

I picked up mama
from a small morgue
on her birthday

mama
died in a sanatorium
near Borisov

we stood a while on the porch
the pathologist and I

I don’t know
how she lived
for the last five years
or more

with a heart like that

covered in scars
the stone valves
didn’t close at all

maybe
I’m remembering something wrong

but I also don’t understand
how you lived this life

after
the childhood horror
of fleeing and occupation

with an utterly
torn-apart heart                  

Dmitri Strotsev



ONCE AT THE TRAIN STATION

So what did I do at the train station
when they were taking a piglet from Smarhoń
from the Sunday market
in a hand-woven sack?

He had wet it
trying to escape
had tripped and fallen
had cried out, wounded

whenever I remember him still
I am so sorry
so sorry for all the piglets
sorry really for all of us living things

who are forcibly stuffed into various circumstances
no questions asked
to be honest I could be sick from all this
I could just puke.

Tanya Skarynkina




* * *
A pre-war ticket stayed in my pocket
from the Jäppilä station on July 11.

Stayed and stayed,
stayed and stayed.

Stayed and stayed.

Now what, should I start conversations
about a nonexistent Baltic paradise?

Hush. Much has been taken away. Suffocating
through love and cafes and wind from the bay.

Even the reading group and seminar got covered
with petroleum stories from the headboard.

The first sign of Yerevan dust storms
is the change in the light of the streetlamps.

Our beasts disperse into the dark,
forming the true body of the migrant —

even the ones that remained not far
from the Jäppilä station to listen to some techno.

In my thoughts I embrace them and blow
from any house to any house.

                                  Vlad Gagin

*

Just remember, there’s bird-cherry everywhere,
the hawthorn’s blooming, the lilacs thick as thieves,
but you meanwhile are now its enemy,
though who knows—from without or from within.

The chestnut’s standing to its fullest height,
taking on the jack-of-all-trades wind.
So why don’t you go stand by its side,
gaping like some terminal birdwatcher,

yes, yes, at birds, but just look at
their names (where did I find them, now?).
You gorge in silence, like a pigeon or a swift,
but you could be singing like a warbler or a finch.

Can’t sing? then go on, time for bed.
Can’t sleep? then get up early,
open the window, check again
to see if there’s some grackles or a robin.

My goodness, look, the sky’s so blue!
But you break out in sweat, then freeze anew,
as if it’s neither dead nor alive, your
soul—a rag, crumpled in the kitchen sink.

Hey, rag, squeeze yourself out, get it together,
take a stroll somewhere slippery and sticky!
Remember, there’s so much life around
that any gaze and every smile,

snippets of conversation, a random phrase,
our shared confusion in its haze and roar
sounds out so brightly, as if pure acid
were suddenly splashed in your face.

And how I can describe all this bullshit
without profanity—I really can’t conceive.
Most of all, remember, the motherfucking lilacs!
The hawthorn and the bird-cherry!

                      Yuli Gugolev

* * *

I looked at your face
And the dark began there
Outside in the morning people
Will speak in the language of textbooks

I’m trying to learn it as quickly as possible
At least to the point where I can understand
Easy YA detective books

My language turned against me
My language my enemy
When I speak it with you
My Ukrainian-speaking boy
I feel in my mouth a bitterness impossible to remove
Even by kisses
The bitterness of betrayal

I gobble tabs of Ukrainian
At an English-language rave
I mainline German
In Vienna
There’s so much Russian in the free trams
I turn away every time
Pretend I’m local

In Vienna there’s a bit less
Ukrainian
For half a year or more you didn’t tell me
It was your native language
We only figured it out later

What should I speak to you in?
My native language has been poisoned by Russian tanks
Yours
Sorry but for me a Russian-speaking kid
sent to a Ukrainian-language school
It was the language of violence, bullying and demonstrative
Language olympiads

And how can I speak with you
How to speak
In German that you don’t know
In English that grosses me out
In broken Ukrainian
In the language of your brother’s murderers
(He was two years younger than me)
If at least its Ukrainian version?

—————————————————

We choose the language of darkness
The light rustle of sheets
The smell of iqos and marijuana
You like for it to always
Be quiet
The language
Of your bleached-out once-green hair
Of my dreads thrown across the pillow

                                  Fridrikh Chernyshov


* * *

I just
can't anymore

(a poem)

                                  German Lukomnikov



*
those who can read and those who cannot read
those who can write and those who cannot write

those who have lots of words
and those who do not have a single word

those who have something to say and those who have nothing to say
those who have reasons to speak and those who have no reason to speak

those who are guilty and those who are not guilty
those our hearts burn for and those who would be better off not being born
those who already died of grief and those who are dying of grief 

so that the enemies of nicosia
have an easier time slandering nicosia

those who did what they could
and those who did what they should

both I and the language that was.

and you
you.

Mar. 21, 2020

Stanislav Lvovsky, trans. Yazhe Yang



 * * *

everyone saves
what’s most precious
turns out
it’s
not
you               

                                  Dmitri Kuz’min



***

Huge piles of heavy snow
A terrifying night ahead
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
The last place we will rest our heads

Full of perplexing tenderness
Light on melting bits of ice
These bomb shelters just outside Moscow
Like burial mounds in the mournful gneiss

Conceived by gentle Brezhnev
For the remnants of the people
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
This is your and our freedom

Into the earth, enchanting female,
We shall depart, tears mounting as we go
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
Will cover us with its divine paw

Maybe as a wondering kid you walked
Around this wild abandoned field
But you were told: there’s a hole, too
Between the school and five-story bloc

But you were told: if it’s not there yet
It definitely will be later
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
And Russian people all around you

A carpet of snow, foamy as champagne
And just as cold and radioactive
The bomb shelter just outside Moscow
Will make everything so attractive.

Snow settles on the eternal lair
And will stay until the arrival
O bomb shelter just outside Moscow
My quiet ode is just for you

My shining song is all about you
You don’t believe me, but you should
A nifty ladder going down
A terrifying door shuts from above

‘Midst your stalactites I’ll be lounging
I’ll spot the diamonds in the concrete
Of the bomb shelter just outside Moscow:
Poor unfortunates in gas-masks

                                  Andrei Rodionov

*

Just remember, there’s bird-cherry everywhere,
the hawthorn’s blooming, the lilacs thick as thieves,
but you meanwhile are now its enemy,
though who knows—from without or from within.

The chestnut’s standing to its fullest height,
taking on the jack-of-all-trades wind.
So why don’t you go stand by its side,
gaping like some terminal birdwatcher,

yes, yes, at birds, but just look at
their names (where did I find them, now?).
You gorge in silence, like a pigeon or a swift,
but you could be singing like a warbler or a finch.

Can’t sing? then go on, time for bed.
Can’t sleep? then get up early,
open the window, check again
to see if there’s some grackles or a robin.

My goodness, look, the sky’s so blue!
But you break out in sweat, then freeze anew,
as if it’s neither dead nor alive, your
soul—a rag, crumpled in the kitchen sink.

Hey, rag, squeeze yourself out, get it together,
take a stroll somewhere slippery and sticky!
Remember, there’s so much life around
that any gaze and every smile,

snippets of conversation, a random phrase,
our shared confusion in its haze and roar
sounds out so brightly, as if pure acid
were suddenly splashed in your face.

And how I can describe all this bullshit
without profanity—I really can’t conceive.
Most of all, remember, the motherfucking lilacs!
The hawthorn and the bird-cherry!

                      Yuli Gugolev

* * *

I looked at your face
And the dark began there
Outside in the morning people
Will speak in the language of textbooks

I’m trying to learn it as quickly as possible
At least to the point where I can understand
Easy YA detective books

My language turned against me
My language my enemy
When I speak it with you
My Ukrainian-speaking boy
I feel in my mouth a bitterness impossible to remove
Even by kisses
The bitterness of betrayal

I gobble tabs of Ukrainian
At an English-language rave
I mainline German
In Vienna
There’s so much Russian in the free trams
I turn away every time
Pretend I’m local

In Vienna there’s a bit less
Ukrainian
For half a year or more you didn’t tell me
It was your native language
We only figured it out later

What should I speak to you in?
My native language has been poisoned by Russian tanks
Yours
Sorry but for me a Russian-speaking kid
sent to a Ukrainian-language school
It was the language of violence, bullying and demonstrative
Language olympiads

And how can I speak with you
How to speak
In German that you don’t know
In English that grosses me out
In broken Ukrainian
In the language of your brother’s murderers
(He was two years younger than me)
If at least its Ukrainian version?

—————————————————

We choose the language of darkness
The light rustle of sheets
The smell of iqos and marijuana
You like for it to always
Be quiet
The language
Of your bleached-out once-green hair
Of my dreads thrown across the pillow

                                  Fridrikh Chernyshov


* * *

I just
can't anymore

(a poem)

                                  German Lukomnikov



*
those who can read and those who cannot read
those who can write and those who cannot write

those who have lots of words
and those who do not have a single word

those who have something to say and those who have nothing to say
those who have reasons to speak and those who have no reason to speak

those who are guilty and those who are not guilty
those our hearts burn for and those who would be better off not being born
those who already died of grief and those who are dying of grief 

so that the enemies of nicosia
have an easier time slandering nicosia

those who did what they could
and those who did what they should

both I and the language that was.

and you
you.

Mar. 21, 2020

Stanislav Lvovsky, trans. Yazhe Yang



 * * *

everyone saves
what’s most precious
turns out
it’s
not
you               

                                  Dmitri Kuz’min



***

Huge piles of heavy snow
A terrifying night ahead
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
The last place we will rest our heads

Full of perplexing tenderness
Light on melting bits of ice
These bomb shelters just outside Moscow
Like burial mounds in the mournful gneiss

Conceived by gentle Brezhnev
For the remnants of the people
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
This is your and our freedom

Into the earth, enchanting female,
We shall depart, tears mounting as we go
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
Will cover us with its divine paw

Maybe as a wondering kid you walked
Around this wild abandoned field
But you were told: there’s a hole, too
Between the school and five-story bloc

But you were told: if it’s not there yet
It definitely will be later
A bomb shelter just outside Moscow
And Russian people all around you

A carpet of snow, foamy as champagne
And just as cold and radioactive
The bomb shelter just outside Moscow
Will make everything so attractive.

Snow settles on the eternal lair
And will stay until the arrival
O bomb shelter just outside Moscow
My quiet ode is just for you

My shining song is all about you
You don’t believe me, but you should
A nifty ladder going down
A terrifying door shuts from above

‘Midst your stalactites I’ll be lounging
I’ll spot the diamonds in the concrete
Of the bomb shelter just outside Moscow:
Poor unfortunates in gas-masks

                                  Andrei Rodionov

***

bé_la_lo_russian — the unstable name of my language

still forming or already falling apart
into its component parts

its russian polish lithuanian cultures

during history lessons they talked with us about tolkien
and the endonym tuteishya, here-talk

there wasn’t a separate word
for the ones who lived on the territory
of the lithuanian principality
of the russian empire

we are from here tut we just fit here maybe this is why
unfitness historical and personal
is our national feature

and when amidst someone else’s war
we try to remind people
of our political prisoners
when we go down into european metro stations
wrapped in white/red/white flags
and write poems from safe places
with forced nostalgia
(the ones in the country are long since silent)
it’s just an old news item

— why are you speaking in the language of empire?

this question seems
implicitly to judge me

to put me on a side I didn’t choose
there was nothing to choose from

“when I was a child no one spoke
bé_la_lo_Russian” I want to say


save for a handful of conflict-oriented
people forever angry at someone

expecting everyone to switch to bé_la_lo_

which meant more than just switching languages
a concession a bending to their pressure
and open disdain

and everyone went on speaking (not-) their language

communication as a fault line

what in me is bel_russian:

the sense of earth

its gravitation linked to me

when you make your way barefoot across the meadow and the dry grass pricks your feet but if you place your foot vertically with the whole sole down it doesn’t hurt the earth carries you like a naked chtonic youngling covers you with itself a patina of dust on your ankles hands belly you can trace fingers across the dry hot skin with bleached white hairs

this is all I have from bel_rus

also thirst in softened muscles not the throat thirsting so but all this essence warmed to its foundation in the zorb of midday in the streaming heat in the sphere of the striped sinewy grasshoppers’ hypnotic chirring as they jump right onto the body-movement the body-function—to swim—to fall into the river without feeling where you are where water is and swim as one flesh and density with water

this is all that is bel_russian in me

the arguments over whether to write a or o seem to be
because of the basic impossibility of a connecting vowel

are we the only people that
dares to call itself white

does this perhaps conceal ra / ru / cism


russians are only white

did they not spill blood?

even when
they were supposed to defend themselves?

is this why we are bel_rusians?

a transgressive nation

re_ru_vealing our borders and their
pathological erogenousness

the gaping gap between bel and rus
into which everyone takes us
into which we take ourselves
with even greater fervor

girls bringing flowers to the riot police

love for the tyrant

calling the tyrant father

bats’ka

genetic masochism

is this bel_russian too?

we knew we needed to be proud but we didn’t know what of

we learned matchyna mova which
was not a mothertongue
for any of us
and pronouncing matchyna we learned to lie

I love matchyna mova we said and loved

barbies

legos

snickers

american movies like home alone

and every bel_rusian born in the 90s
dreamed of ending up home alone
to have a house like that

and lived like a ghost of the american dream

there _where

they won’t show any new movies at the theater

you won’t buy brand-name clothes or cosmetics

why is it four hours on the train to minsk
a night in the train to moscow

isolation

isolation

isolation

and that is all that was bel_russian in us

the desire to be free of everything
bel_russian

while knowing nothing of what it was

with an utter lack of it

bel_________________________________________rusian

an empty space where they grow together
bel_russian polish russian ukrainian roots

maybe that is my identity

an underscore in the nationality section


the negative body
of a belarusian in history

the empty place
of a belarusian in history

so why are you writing in the language of the empire that colonized you?

because this is a way of escaping
the context of nonexistence
as the safest way of living

my land has buried me many times

has lulled me to sleep in the grave dug for me

has raised living corpse-tubers of its worm-eaten
national vegetable

bulba busel vozera and mova [bulba, stork, lake and language]

everything that in us is _not_ bel_russian —

the unstable name of my language

still forming or already falling apart into

slavic and borrowed roots

a discredited narco-languagelet
taking at least into account
the assimilation of neighboring sounds
the deep plasticity of the language

pretentious tarashkevich
throwing in soft signs everywhere
inside consonant clusters
arthrosis of the joints of word segments

trasianka
the only patois always in use
when you have to speak bel_russian
but you don’t know how
when you speak russian
like you can
like everyone does

tomāto / tomáto
two pronunciation norms
the papa-hossan language of the people
its marginal codependent vulgar and sweet brood

true bel_russian language —

of the mundane of jokes and close friends

maybe the only bel_russian thing in every one of us

us smiling stylish young and beautiful
who became a nation for a few months

art for art’s sake

and then left for russia poland lithuania

fleeing persecution for that sense of solidarity
that everyone felt for the first time
the 20- and 30-somethings

and that slowly dwindled with every passing day
when fewer and fewer people went out into the streets

a breach we thought was a connection

the agony of incogruence, again not fitting

the body rejecting space

pushing you out of yourself

and only in this way

into other cultures beyond the limits of the maternal body

with ressentiment
oedipus complexes
opportunism
provincialism

you
are born

with prefab propaganda
and a doleful history

bé_la_lo_rus

                                  Maria Malinovskaya






* * *

When one takes an anti-war position these days, it is wise to acquaint oneself with the other anti-war positions available, such as:

I am against war because it is a trap that our enemies have lured us into.
I am against war because it is bad for business, or it necessitates a whole new business model.
I am against war because it hogs all the attention which I desperately need.
I am against war because we’re brother nations after all, and really one and the same nation, so like how can you fight against your own self.
I am against war but the bosses know better.
I am against war because our special historical mission lies elsewhere.
I am against war because how could Russians want war?
I am against war because an Anschluss following a referendum is simpler and more legitimate.
I am against war because if it keeps going on then Putin will be kaputt.
I am against war, we just have to enforce order everywhere.
I am against war, let’s just love one another, hugs for all.
I am against war because I am completely against everything that happens over there.
I am against war, but the collective West was the first to strike.
I am against war, but it’s shameful to abandon your own boys.
I am against war, but isn’t everybody against something everywhere.
I am against war, thank g-d we haven’t even started anything.
etc.

                                  Rufia Dzhanibekova / Ruthie Jenrbekova





Geography Lesson

you can love your motherland after buchenwald
after kosovo after the gulag
after the child’s tiny tear
the dew-drop on the poppy
the birch tree and the aspen

you can you can
and it’s unavoidable

use estrangement
ostranenie
draw the chalk circle

like gogol
and like brecht

reach for world culture
when it says revolver

standing in the humanitarian corridors of memory
call to mind

I found out that I
have an enormous family
and no one will help us
and no one should help us

I sleep well every night says paul tibbets

why and for whom am I writing this

love us little dark ones
love us little dead ones

and drones love their motherland
what does the philosophy of posthumanism say
the nonhuman objects “A” “I”

what will the vegetable parliament undertake today
concern itself with turnip exports
or vote for signoro pomidoro
unanimously

the motherland is a conference hall
it’s a computer game
light
normal
hard
very hard
insane
squatting chewing on a toothpick
you can’t hide from her, not between her crooked teeth
or under her dry tongue
you’ll fly off to freedom
with a hole in your right side

so better go back right away
to the lap
the belly
deeper
to the Zvartnots airport

the motherland lies here
somewhere between
the hammer and the back of the head

in the spaces between lines
the phrase
"I sleep well every night"

                                  Konstantin Shavlovsky




***

You know, I want some dark stuff
Some wrinkles on the sac
Some black-blue and venous
Stuff you don’t even like, doesn’t mean anything

Those strange, strange wrinkles
The sound of urine releasing
Fucking til you’re black-n-blue
A clarification of the grandiloquent

You know, I want some sweet stuff
Some runes of anal
Thanks be to the Lord
That I don’t want anything

Thanks be to the Lord
That we have everything we need
That no one’s grabbing anybody
That no one’s had it up to here

That no one’s bragging ‘cept for you
That there’s no la-la externality
That he said: Yes, winter
That he said just now

that he said my dear
that he said something springlike
that there’s no whatness to this
that there’s really nothing to this at all

comforting speech
red-berry rivers
thanks be to you that there’s a war on
thanks be to you that it’ll end

                                  Elena Kostyleva