by Ekaterina Simonova
translated by Anna Halberstadt

Grandmother was incarcerated in 1941.  She screamed when
selling bread,
Paid for by bread cards,
That all of us will die of hunger soon, will be buried,
Herself she cut the portions for the buyers smaller, than required.
Remained: a thirty-year-old and a ninety-year-old.
Grandma was not a blood relative either, she loved, when drunk,
To get stuff out from the trunk, that was there a long time, and
smelled of moth balls,
To show off: “This is a gift from Andrey Ivanych,
And this one — from Pimen Valentinych
A shawl with real silk fringes,
A real fox collar
She had white hands, a ring with a happy stone,
Streaming light like a star.”

There was no one else.  Hunger arrived sooner, than we thought.
It ate the fox, ate the shawl, began eating grandma.
Her head had to be shaved.  The thirty-year-old would wash the ninety-year-old
Scraping lice off her head with a knife.

Snow fell early this year.
It ate everything, that was not eaten by people.
Feeding on others’ hunger, imagine,
It grew taller than a thirteen-yea-old girl.
At night she would go to fetch water.  You had to go far.
It was dark and scary.  She would listen: was there anybody
Behind or ahead of her, stars above her were burning, iridescent,
Like the ring with a happy stone, easy youth.

The dull moon, was dull and blunted, like a knife.
Winter breathing the color of milk with water
Milk, diluted with water on a frozen windowsill.

Lice did not disappear, even now, it seems
They were not real,
The head scarf was swarming with them, water was needed every
day,
Every night.

The most important thing on the way home was this — to hear
someone’s steps
Ahead of you or behind, to know, you are not alone on this road,
To sigh, relieved: now there is nothing to be afraid of.

by Bakhyt Kenjeev
     translated by J. Kates

* * *

Night froze on guard, clenched its little fist.  I’d
downed a shot of brandy, lay down on my side,
A sharp moan maybe: weight of wind on a willow,
a gray mouse happily waving its tail.

Companion of my soul, coo, dove of my blood.
You ask: love or death? Both are equally good
Or bad, bother me no end, both abduct
light and hemoglobin from the depth of the heart.

You don’t want to stand in either winter or wind,
both tempt in the twilight their whisper of sin.
And so you doze sadly and simply breathing in, ah! —
the timorous heavens dumbfounded stars.

by Aleksandr Skidan
     translated from Russian by John Narins 

* * *

I descended into the subway, I saw the homeless
with plastic bags on their heads,
with garbage gags in their mouths, like mummies
in mausolea of intrauterine slumber,
like the raided tombs of the brotherhood,
embedded
in the window-frames of the fetal footlights,
dissected into equal sections of inequality
in the distribution of disintegrating halos
by the ribbon of the escalator defiling
down the hollow tunnel of the harrowed pupil,
where a socket night picks out
the dragon-tooth filament
in the diurnal incandescence of the retort
with its currentless strand
slipped through a venerable limb-stump,
a surgical strike of humanitarian aid —
a creative industry with a red cross on board

* * *
     translated by Thomas Epstein

It’s like a wall of rain
or a wall of news
when you’re crumbling like chalk
as if the world were tottering
and could be righted
only by
crumbling —

but the world is precisely this wall of news
in which your chalk is embedded

* * *

speech stones flow around the dictionary of nothing
seven of them in your sinus
mouth, nine

lysis conveying aporia
< unleashing decision >

when you decide to unleash
the knot of life

speak

* * *

the grammarian disseminates semes
fractions of seed
sacrificial miniscule

a name is a gravestone
a circumcision

and shiva’s wool is dipped in a boiling column
of dancing flames

but the heart —
o heart in vain

* * *

the substance of value is thawing

global warming

in a relationship
between ectoplasm and stem cell
cortical computer and alpenstock

O Earth, your mantle nomos!
O coronal sun, ecliptical!
cognitive dissonance
cognitive capitalism

trapped in love

tuft of light gaping

like dry ice

lost < forever? >
swimming in printmaking

the absolute referent

— la mort

by Anton Yakovlev

The man in the vest adjusted his hair.
His eyes were electric blue.
You knew who he was and why he was there.
Sadly, no one else knew.

Then Boris came out with his Trotsky quip,
said Trotsky wasn’t that bad.
You noticed the blue-eyed man bite his lip.
Nothing more would need to be said.

You watched it unfold for the rest of the night:
the way Boris kept getting lit,
the charm he turned on, his teammates’ delight
at his escapist wit.

The next morning you knew not to look for him.
His room was empty and clean.
The hotel had checked in no one by that name.
He was never heard from again.

It’s been decades.  Your children are teaching school.
Last December, the Curtain fell.
Some teammates of yours fell to alcohol.
You’re retired, still in decent health.

You think of Boris, that talking dead
on that night of pickles and vodka,
and the shadow of Asrael over his head
in the shape of a blue-eyed informant.

Was he sent to the Gulag, or was he shot
in the head right there in the yard?
You will never switch off this thought.
You will never get a fresh start.

There are bullet holes in the back of the bus
and behind the old kindergarten.
There is blood in the benches where fathers drink kvass
and ex-convicts make concept art.

You walk these streets every single day.
You drive your Jeep among ghosts.
You’ve grown accustomed to it.  It’s okay.
Nothing revealed, nothing lost.

Only sometimes, at home, you let out a sigh.
Your granddaughter looks up at you.
You notice her look, raise an eyebrow, smile.
Her eyes are electric blue.
Originally published in The New Criterion, June 2019