– Master
I brought you
Kharkov
broken childhood
Your ad says
we
fix everything
– I can’t fix
your childhood
was bombed
it can’t
be fixed
is it
so important to you?
see the expiration date
it expired
a long time ago
– Master
then fix
my city
my university
plazas
fountains
parks
and people
murdered
people
– I can’t
you embarrass me
by asking for the impossible
anything can be repaired
but not everything
can be fixed
go away
– Master
in a house
of my friend
in my friend’s burned down
house
his cat died
fix the cat
can you do this at least
is it possible?
– Nothing
can be fixed
changed
brought back
people
cities
cats
or you
~ ~ ~
Old age is no volk*
it won’t die, won’t run away
get yourself botoxed
drink shark oil
champagne a caviar mask
beat it into your face with someone else’s fist
Dearest
Who are you with?
Who are you talking about?
Old age is not real
It’s just a malaise
There’s spirulina
Microcrystalline cellulose
Alpha-lipoic acid
Hyaluronic thread
Crawl with it through the eye of a needle
Pull yourself through
There’s no such thing as old age
There’s war
There’s love
There’s death
– – –
*volk – волк, Rus. for ‘wolf’
____________________________________
Translated by Nina Kossman
Olena (Alyona, Milena) Maksakowa was born in Kharkov. She studied History of Russian Literature at KSU. Her writing was published in various publications, including Articulation, ROAR, Harpy Hybrid Review, Golden Fleece, etc. She is a co-organizer of the festival Hanover Spring and of Heavenly Kharkiv, a Zoom project. She is an editor of the anti-war website Tochka.Zreniya and the author of Little Diary. She has lived in Germany since 2002.
Six Trains of No Return collects twelve short stories and novellas that examine immigrant sagas and dislocations.
When Clea returns to London with her new Russian husband, she is surprised to see him become even more eccentric.
After a century of brooding and talking telepathically to his Mausoleum janitor from his glass coffin, Vladimir Lenin awakens—alive and bewildered in the modern world.
A haunting dystopia some readers have called “the new 1984.” In a society where memory is rewritten and resistance is pre-approved, freedom isn’t restricted; it’s redefined. As systems evolve beyond human control and choice becomes a simulation, true defiance means refusing the script, even when the system already knows you will.
