Mama, your boy is freezing;
it is so cold and dark!
Mama, you are the stars now, –
how can I give you a hug?
A beam from the sky is stretching
to the earth like a silver thread;
Mama, you are the sky now, –
how can we have a chat?
The light will touch so gently
and lighten the dead of night;
Mama, where are your hands now
that used to caress my head?
Is it a voice I hear, –
or is it the wind that calls?
It is so dank and chilly;
Mama, your boy is cold!
~
Холодно и промозгло
мальчику твоему;
мама, теперь ты – звёзды:
как же я обниму?
Луч до земли серебрян –
тянется, словно нить;
мама, теперь ты – небо
как же поговорить?
Свет осторожно тронет,
высветит ночь ясней.
Где же твои ладони
для головы моей?
Ветер ли? оклик? возглас? –
вслушаюсь – не пойму.
Холодно и промозгло
мальчику твоему.
Igor Kuras is a poet, prose writer, and editor of “Etaji”, a Russian-language literary journal. He is the author of several poetry collections. His poems have been published in Russia, as well as in Russian-language periodicals and almanacs in Ukraine, Canada, Germany, Israel, and the US. His poems have been translated into Hebrew, English, Ukrainian, and German.
Simon Patlis grew up in the former Soviet Union (first in Tashkent, later in Kishinev.) Since moving to the US in 1991, he’s lived in San Diego, CA. Mathematician by education, he works as an IT consultant. He has been writing poetry since childhood and translates English and Russian poetry (English to Russian, Russian to English). He is the author of “Duda”, published in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, in 2006. His work was published in “The Notebook. A Collection of Contemporary Russian Poetry in North America” (“Общая Тетрадь”, Moscow, 2007), as well as in other collections and almanacs of poetry published over the years in Russia and the US.
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.
A new book of poems by Nina Kossman. “When the mythological and personal meet, something transforms for this reader…” -Ilya Kaminsky
This isn’t self-help. It’s not a parody either. It’s something stranger and smarter: a satirical, uncategorizable book about belief, leadership, algorithmic power, and the performance of divinity in modern life.
