Over the third mountain yonder, the sky’s a-yawnin’. The glow wouldn’t let the sky sleep last night, searing the sky’s sides, mantling the sky’s face. The glow rested against the mountains, and unfasten its crimson-red girdle, and unclasp its necklace to line the air above the village with blood-red crosses, and unbraid its flaxen hair to let it flow on pearly clouds, […]

a frozen sea of people rolls stones around its mouth
this dead language of a time we’ll turn to
when the wind cuts life’s thread like a flower […]

a woman with a heart this heavy cannot fly
like a leaf held to asphalt by a rock
like a page from a book disassembled into quotes . . .
[…]

Due to his natural meekness vis-à-vis womankind, the professor once again did not believe for long that Zoe truly loved him. That same evening, during the walk, he abandoned the thought altogether. That change occurred in him quite easily. He and the three younger Schmidts walked rather far out from Tuapse, all the way to the Kadosh lighthouse, and, tired from walking, they settled to rest by the seaside. […]

Amid voicing
and amid silence
among the trees and the insects
and a fearsome metal seagull. […]

Falling forest
falling human
falling autumn
falling […]

My head rolls from tree to tree
like tumbleweed
or a ball […]

Nikita’s eyes are blindfolded with tape
Nikita’s hands are bound with tape
his head droops like a branch of ripe apples […]

AUNTIE MOTIA
All right, that’s enough! Now, Moka, Moka, Moka, will you finally tell us — are you really not a Russian person?
MOKII
I’m a Ukrainian.
AUNTIE MOTIA
And Ukrainians, are they not Russian people? Tell me, are they not Russian? Are they not just the same as all Russians?
[…]

Aliye, Aliona, and I. From our names, written out in a line or listed in a column, you can read the history of Crimea — or at least one of its chapters: however, a superficial glance at these three names would certainly lead to confusion. Aliona, with her Russian-looking name, is Ukrainian. I, with my Ukrainian-looking name, am a Russian. And this deception in names makes the picture even more intricate […]

There are quite a lot of buses that stop here because our town sits right where two highways cross. Over there, two very old roads to Uman and Cherkasy intersect. Any bus you might take to Korsun, Zvenyhorodka, Kaniv or Kryvyi Rih, even if it’s only local transit, will come our way. It’s summer now, though, and there are fewer passengers. Maybe they’ve all gone away […]

I didn’t have time to write a longer post about my trip to Sievierodonetsk. I went there for a premiere at the Luhansk Theatre, which relocated there after the occupation in 2014. ‘How can you even go there?’ asked my friends in Poland, ‘It’s not safe.’ ‘Eastern Ukraine’s been a warzone for eight years,’ I said, ‘of course it’s not safe.’ […]

‘You hang onto nothing, girls, that’s what I’m gonna teach you’,
Nan used to say, smoking cigarette after cigarette. […]

dance my little bird, right in the middle of town.
it’s exactly for this that they burned it down.
[…]

Again, the entire afternoon stretched before me in anticipation of departure. And again, it was sunny and bright. Although this was no longer breathless Paris but a carefree, cheerful Marseille, where people resembled migratory birds who had landed briefly to rest before flying on. Small steamers, motorboats, fishing barges, and passenger boats went back and forth from the old dock. Streetcars, cars, limousines, and busses […]