What goes undelivered
Sometimes I talk to myself while I hang clothes on the foldable laundry rack. Little mouse gnawing at the heart, do not lift your pink snout, curl into cotton dreams, save the faint tapping of your belly for another day. Before the last sock leaves my hands, the beast begins to twist and swirl, flip its furled tiny limbs, the echo of its mute gnarling swells in the pit of my stomach, breath fragments hold fast to chest, white knuckles to prove. It will need good thread and tiny stitches, when the winding neck of pain stretches wide, spilling from body onto damp clothes, a river of scumbled sighs. Later, the blinds shall choke the light to soft grey, night feathers spread out and I will climb the tall bed where the cat dragged the innards of a magpie.
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Что остается недоставленным
Иногда, развешивая одежду на сушильной стойке, я разговариваю сама с собой. Маленький мышонок грызет мое сердце, не поднимай свою розовую мордочку, свивайся в хлопчатобумажные сны, прибереги слабое постукивание желудка на другой день. До того как выпускаю из рук последний носок, зверёк начинает свиваться и вертеться, шлепать своими крохотными изогнутыми конечностями, эхо его немого рычания распухает в аду моего желудка, осколки его дыхания врезаются в мою грудь, доказательства тому – белые костяшки моих пальцев. Понадобится хорошая нитка и крохотные стежки, когда искривленная шея боли растянется вширь, выливаясь из тела на сырую одежду рекой неровных вздохов. Позже шторы приглушат свет до мягко-серого, ночные перья расправятся, я заберусь на высокую кровать, по которой кошка таскала внутренности сороки.
Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her collection The Flavor of The Other was published in 2020 with Dos Madres Press.
Olga Bragina is a poet, prose writer and translator. She was born in Kyiv in 1982. She graduated from the Translation Department of Kyiv National Linguistic University. Bragina is the author of five books: Applications (2011), Namedropping (2012), Background Light (2018), Speech is Like a Flash Lamp (2020), and Prisms of Pleroma (2021). Her work was published in literary journals such as Vozdukh, Interpoezia, Polutona, Novaya Yunost’, Volga, Zinziver, Deti Ra, and others. She translated John High’s book of poems Vanishing Acts into Russian, the book was published in Kyiv in 2018, and the book of poems by Katie Farris Ice for You (published in Kyiv in 2021).
This excellent anthology, compiled and edited by Julia Nemirovskaya, showcases poems by Russian (and Russian-speaking) poets who express their absolute rejection of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The documentary novel “The Tenth Circle” tells the story of the life, struggle, and destruction of the Minsk ghetto, one of the largest in the Soviet Union and Europe during World War II. (Russian edition)
“Monkey’s Defense” is a collection of short stories and parables by Nina Kossman, bilingual author of several books of poetry and prose and translator of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems into English.
