Three Poems Translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
The First Aerial Bombardment
Serhiy Zhadan, translated from the Ukrainian by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
The street. A woman zigzags the street. A pause. By the greengrocery she hesitates. Must she buy bread? there is not – is there enough? – not enough bread? Must she buy bread now, or – tomorrow? – she hesitates. Stares at. Stares at her phone. Her phone. Rings. Mother. She speaks to mother: Mother! without listening she shouts. Shouts by the window of greengrocery; at the window of greengrocery as if she is shouting at herself in the window. Slaps the phone. Zigzags the street, shouting at her invisible – i.e impossible – Mother.
Tears. Tears at the impossibility of forgiving her mother. Forget the bread. Forget. The bread and each living thing on this green earth. Forgo it. Leave it. Alone.
That morning it begins. The first aerial bombardment.
The Correct Approach
Regina Derieva, translated from the Russian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky
The ancients spoke well: briefly – but well. Their thoughts had little wings – like Hermes’s – the ancients were not concerned that someone might misunderstand – everyone understood them. But if one’s mind were weak, he will quietly become intimate with a Muse, one of the nine. And the Muse, inclining her head gracefully, will teach him. She will teach him to continue to stay silent and silent and silent. And if she permits him to speak he will have to speak in hexameters.
[Night. Street. Lamp. Drugstore.]
Aleksandr Blok, translated from the Russian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky
Night. Street. Lamp. Drugstore. Dull and sleazy light. Live twenty-five years more — It will be as now. No way out.
You die — and again you begin. All is repeated as before: Night. The canal’s icy ripples. Drugstore. Lamp. Street.
Katie Farris is the author of BOYSGIRLS (Tupelo). She has translated and edited several books, including Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poets (Tupelo).
Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf), Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo) and co- translator of Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Tsvetaeva (Alice James).
Our Friend Karl
Mark DeFoe
“Why should I call your name/when I know you’re to blame/for making me blue” Wasted Days and Wasted Nights – Freddy Fender
Truth was, his life was like our own, rich with cliché and heart-numbing sorrow. He went too far or often never far enough.
He could not workup enough self-torture or good old guilt to shame himself, for every time he’d feel that need for action, he’d find it all a bit boring. He’d succumb to this or that, either or neither, side-tracked by some shiny bauble in the distance, some whacko semi-scam, some weird science, some celebrity morsel that would tease his palate.
He supposed his malady was chemical, but could never dial that well-recommended shrink, assuming the doc would echo his dad, who always said, “Straighten up and fly right.”
He went on, delightful dinner guest, we agreed, but in the end, unable to buy himself a cemetery plot, unsure if he had heard above the party’s roar, the last call.
We found him in his last apartment. dead in bed. Beside him were piles of books, festooned and feathered with clever book marks, telling how far he had to read to reach the end.
Mark DeFoe is Professor Emeritus at West Virginia Wesleyan College . His work has appeared in chapbooks, anthologies, and journals, including Poetry, Paris Review, Sewanee Review, Denver Quarterly, Reed, South Carolina Review, Santa Fe Review, Smartish Pace, and many more.
The Pond + Origins & Forms: Eight Sijos
Sarah Audsley
The Pond
Because I knew better, but wanted to anyway, because he hesitated ever so slightly when I asked, because I felt my skin as naked and taut, because I wanted to feel, because he told me a secret about himself, because I didn’t know what else to do but jump—
Did I say we held hands? When I dove, I dove all the way through the sudden snap of cold liquid filling the hole my body made.
Did I tell you there was no moon? Traces of bone-colored frost at the pond’s edges. The invisible sheen of ice my head pierced —mind reaching back. Gasping, I dreamed this before, heaving, I swear I was here before —body in shock of water, body cold—water rushing out, blood re-routing back to the heart’s small caverns like fluttering wings of moths trapped between the screen & windowpane on a farm where I would wander in the fields, hide among long winding rows of corn…
Whose hand was it tugging my body out? No farm, no field to roam just frozen feet, shock of hot shower; the steam on skin rushes through. The runnels of blood down our bodies, shards of ice melting. The stitches, the proof: I’m not safe. I am solvent.
Origins & Forms: Eight Sijos
after Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello
1 Math is mostly equations: one plus one, two plus two, plus… also formulas, so many designed variables— to keep someone alive, calculate, add & subtract the costs.
2 What if hands pull down stars, guide them inside the round belly? What if this is how a spirit dives, twists into a body? What is built up from bones? Fingernails. Skin. Flesh animated.
3 Grandmother’s fingers tightened around my bundled form, (a thing) spitting, begging, for warmth from her hunched over indecisive back—she knew the math would not compute.
4 This is where I’ll learn how to cast the rod to find the fish, or skim the water to chase Jesus bugs, walking on the surface by some trick of tension, & balanced perfection. Keep count.
5 What does this form do that others don’t? I’ll force the issue of Korean poetic form, composing these sijo. In this way, I’ll be closer to my genetics, my bloodlines—strands fraying.
6 This is where I’ll learn how to skip stones across how many lakes? Making circles, again, hearing the sound of stone on water. Oars cut cleanly through its flat surface—stars, so many stars.
7 In the heat she’ll fan my round face, place a bottle to my lips flick flies off my head, & try to conjure up my dead mother’s face, show me a smile I’ll never remember, nor this thick night.
8 Always those hands keep plucking stars from the heavens, make constellations inside bodies, make more mothers. I see that form & origins are stories—I’m all those mathematical distances.
Sarah Audsley, an adoptee born in South Korea and raised in rural Vermont, has received support for her work from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and the Banff Centre. Her manuscript-in-progress received a 2021 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council. She lives in Johnson, Vermont where she works for Vermont Studio Center. She holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.
Deepfake Ashbery
Benjamin Aleshire
“Let’s go for a stroll to the river!” ejaculated Diane. And though you’ve already beheld the river on so very many placid occasions your voice-box makes that sound again, that Waterloo “Yes, yes let’s” tootling in your throat. After all you admire Diane for her chandelier, so many crystal wishes lucid in the lubricious half-light, but you bolt to the bathroom mirror and tell it, “You puppy-mewler! The river. Naufraugeur!” That last word chicken-bones in your throat but you don’t know why and it doesn’t matter. Nothing particularly matters here, at’all. Besides, the chandelier proceeds with tinkle-tinkle-tinkling the syllables of your name on the other side of your fortress door. When you compose yourself in subjunctive, return to the flock, no one notices they were gone. The poem is long since finished but its sub-rosa applause keeps going on, and on.
Benjamin Aleshire‘s work has appeared in The Times UK, Iowa Review, Boston Review, London Magazine, and on television in the US, China, and Spain. An excerpt from his novel-in-progress Poet for Hire was featured at Lit Hub and the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog. In 2020, Ben received a James Merrill fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, and was a finalist for the Alice James Award. He serves as a contributing editor for Green Mountains Review. Find him at www.poetforhire.org, and on twitter: @droletariat.
Sabbath + I will not be embalmed and placed behind an iron gate
Kaitlyn Airy
Sabbath
O
stark staring
lark
winter-rank
of thirst
ravish then
this rare acre
this dark
brave
seed.
Under this belfry
my hymn:
the
swollen
hips
of sordid
flowers.
Darkest darling
lantern-faced
among
husks admonish me
your fever.
I will not be embalmed and placed behind an iron gate
I worry about stepping on unmarked graves / the world is full of them / shallow ones covered in soft grass / lurid and lush / for no grave is marked forever / and when showers come
and shroud our prairie / I watch the throat of the earth swallow rain / and upon growing a marriage of root and tree / upon tangling with the dirt / I do not care if I breathe a lungful of soot / for this
is our inheritance / I pull this silk dress over my brow / and think of ash / I touch my cheek and think of clay on the wheel / as I cover my mind with sleep / an arc of stars crowns the sky / burns steadily through the dark air / your eyes
are gold coins which ferry my body across the river / a river which moves like the green pour of sugar and absinthe / or a pair of hands carrying a lover / through the worn curtain of time / and so we watch days
tumble into the barrel / drink the cold ferment of an autumn below / throw tough leather scraps for dogs / and at night / we hug the cold road home drunk / ablaze in rushlight / and if I should kiss sunbaked mud one day / promise
that you’ll bury me undercliff / in a field of heather / a slant of light / that you should scavenge my extinction / my body no longer a home / that you should place that jeweled seed / in the mouth of a girl / who fled a chasm of hounds to warm / your tarnished dark / who sieved the dull husks
of a ruinous year / and held the shape of a seed / of a man / of a history
no other mortal may recall
Kaitlyn Airy is a Korean American poet and fiction writer. She was the 2020 winner of the Phyllis L. Ennes Contest and will be a featured poet at the next Skagit River Poetry Festival. Her recent work appears in EcoTheo and Crab Creek Review. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Virginia.
Three Poems by Elizabeth Ellen
Untitled love poem/bumfuck Michigan
It’s impossible to write a love poem Without sounding like a dick Without sounding like you’ve had a lobotomy Without sounding like cliché words written on mediocre art at a small midwestern art festival Somewhere in bumfuck Michigan
The unspecificity of your own stupid romance The general uninterestingness of happiness
It’s so much easier to write about abandonment Disillusionment, self-harm, separateness
The specificity of getting fucked three times in one night By a stranger from Bumble who wants you to be his girl Who thinks it sounds glamorous or exotic to date a writer Who can’t possibly know the loneliness of said endeavor Until the fourth time he asks if he can come over, the fourth time you tell him no
Has anyone ever written a truly great poem about love? If so, I haven’t read it Better to wait til after the disappointment seeps in, honey: My (unsolicited) advice to you.
Disappointment in yourself, I mean For all the times you insecurely hid your phone (from yourself) All the times you drove right past him on your way to a reading All the times and ways you failed to be the right woman (for him/for yourself)
Failure is so much more interesting, honey
The irony of coming so many times in one night for this stranger When you couldn’t come for him When you wouldn’t allow yourself that vulnerability When standing next to him because you loved him too much Because you admired him Because you’re a fucking coward and scared and afraid
Is this a love poem, honey? I wrote it in ten minutes Without anyone editing it for me
This is my greatest failure (as a woman): my independence My self-alienation, my inability or unwillingness to Let go my own hand/throat/heart In order to hold someone else’s.
My unwillingness to come for a man I love (dependence!) And instead to come for a man I never will (freedom!)
My unwantingness My wanting and unwanting and wanting again
My stupidity And my Self-protection
My liberation And my defeat.
I can only kill things in with my poems. (I told you love poems are stupid)
You’re welcome. (this poem is my gift to you)
Snitches.
MGK
for Colson
I felt dead inside all the time Unless I was looking at Machine Gun Kelly online And then I felt alive
(Alive in the way that makes you want to get a bunch of tattoos, I mean)
I did everything in life backwards I figured getting tattoos was just one more example of this
(getting tattoos underground during quarantine, I mean)
I felt dead inside Reading other ppl’s poems Abt leaves and the sky and rain and mammals who roam the earth Idgaf abt nature Like that Idgaf abt nature in general I couldn’t imagine writing a poem Abt nature
I only felt alive watching MGK videos While drunk in my basement Sitting on my basement floor
I only felt alive reading poems that didn’t fuck w Nature
I went for a walk I was listening to the new song by Megan thee Stallion and Beyonce I saw someone (a feminist) had tweeted something about Beyonce’s rapping skills I heard on the radio Jay Z and The-Dream had helped Beyonce write her rap lyrics I wanted to believe Beyonce could write her own lyrics I misheard one of the lyrics as “now watch me sweep up these earrings” I liked the line so much I was going to use it as an epigraph Until I got home and googled it and it wasn’t anything abt Sweeping up earrings at all
I only feel alive reading/listening to Ppl from Ohio I googled MGK and saw he did an annual concert In the small town in Ohio where I’d grown up surrounded by Amish ppl and regular ppl who had icicles in their bedrooms in winter
I only felt alive while thinking abt Driving around the rural Ohio shitholes where I’d grown up All the hills and streams and cows and manure … Shit, man, I just wrote a poem abt nature
Fuck, I don’t know how to not feel dead inside I guess this is why/when ppl start getting tatted up I guess this is why/when ppl start listening to/fucking w MGK
I guess this is my life now
Drinking in my basement And thinking of what new tattoo I’ll get next While fucking w MGK
KELLY BUNDY,for NMS
A few days after our first date you sent me a text You were the first guy I’d dated in eighteen years
who wasn’t a writer
The text said, “I just read one of your poems on the internet And I liked it!!!”
You sent me another text after that one that said, “I don’t know why you didn’t want me to read your writing on the internet!!”
(Later, you confessed to being very conscious of using proper punctuation, of spelling all words out, in texts to me, on account of my being a writer)
Earlier I’d sent you a picture of my picture on the back of one of my books And you’d said, “I’m going to need a lot more pictures like that!!”
I liked you because you weren’t a writer Or I liked a lot of things about you and one was that you weren’t a writer
(another was you gave good head)
I didn’t like to think too much about writing anymore I didn’t like feeling like a member of a cult anymore
(I didn’t use proper punctuation or spell words all the way out in my texts to you or anyone else anymore)
I said I’d write a poem for you So you could google me and read about yourself
I said I’d wear the fishnets like in the author photo The next time you came over I told you I had a leather jacket, Leather motorcycle boots, The wholeshebang.
(I didn’t really say shebang.)
You said, “Hot, you’ll look like Kelly Bundy.”
I liked how easy it was to please you; How easily you fucked me – How easy it was to come.
I didn’t have to wait and wait and wait. Weeks or months or years.
I said the poem I’m writing about you is going to be called Kelly Bundy.
Some people didn’t like to be written about But you didn’t seem to mind
You seemed to think it was cool or glamorous
— or some shit —
Dating a writer
Mostly we watched videos on YouTube of exotic animals – the insane tatted men who bought and sold them – Between fucking
Sometimes we stood on my balcony watching the deer you’d be behind me you’d wrap your arm around me Cover my mouth with your hand “Shhhhhh,” you’d tell me
and I’d laugh and ask, “Did you just shhhhhush me?” and you’d nod and say, “Shhuuuush.” And cover my mouth back up again with your hand
I really liked this about you most How you weren’t afraid to shush me How you covered my mouth with your hand.
I liked this and I liked how you fucked me; Even though I kept forgetting to wear the damn fishnets. Even though I didn’t look anything like Kelly Bundy. Even though, even though.
Elizabeth Ellen is the author of a new story collection, Her Lesser Work, and a new play, Exit, Carefully (both SF/LD books), among other titles. She has a short story in the current issue of Harper’s Magazine.
