Larissa Shmailo

June 25, 1939

It's frightening to die, and such a shame to leave

This captivating riffraff that enchants me;


The stuff so dear to poets, so very lovely,


I never celebrated; it somehow wasn't to be.

I loved to come back home at the break of dawn

And shift my things around in half an hour.

I loved the white windowsill, and also the flower,

The carved faceted glass, and also the water,

And the heavens, greenish-azure in their color—

And that I was a poet and a wicked man.

And when every June came with my birthday again

I'd idolize that holiday, bustling


With verses by friends and congratulations from women,

With crystal laughter, and gay glasses clinking


And the lock of that hair, unique, individual

And that kiss, so entirely inevitable.

But now at home it’s all set up differently;

It's June and I no longer have that homesickness.

In this way, life is teaching me patience,

And turbid, my blood now is stirring this birthday,

And a secret anxiety is tormenting me—


What have I done with my great destiny,


Oh my God, what have I done with me!

Arseny Tarkovsky

© Translation by Larissa Shmailo

* * *

it's like a rain wall

or a wall of news

when you crumble like chalk

as if the world lurched

and it could still be saved

only in this way

                crumbling

but the world is precisely this wall of news

into which your chalk is embedded

* * *

speech stones flow around the dictionary of nothing

you have seven of them in your sinus

mouth, nine

aporia accompanies lyusis

<unleashing decision>

when you decide to untie

the node of life

say

* * *

the grammarian distributes the semes

a fraction of seeds

sacrificial miniscule

a name is a gravestone

circumcision

and shiva's wool is dipped in a boiling column

of dancing flames

but the heart

heart in vain

© Alexandr Skidan 

Translated by Larissa Shmailo and the author

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Eileen R. Tabios

“I forgot a carapace, then its splitting”

I forgot a coil that previously bowed without purpose—it began to be lubricated for an intent to revise.

I forgot a bolt of cream linen turning crimson along the edges touching the floor.

I forgot a carapace, then its splitting.

I forgot the silvery thrum among treetops during perpetual autumns.

I forgot anthologies of glass.

I forgot the difference between desires for father and fodder.

I forgot questions thickening as the sun moved alongside the moon to preserve the possibility of synchronous precisions against skeptics who surfaced to avoid commitment.

I forgot the seeking that began without knowing whether one was beginning to stink or sing.

I forgot the clutter of broken objects manifesting affordable treasures when one owns nothing, or owns only dilemmas over belonging.

I forgot the aftermaths from dilemmas of belonging.

I forgot algebra failing to succor when relationships were inevitably destabilized by indigenous cell memory.

I forgot broken glass surfacing my first conception of Beauty from the lovely wink of a glass sliver, belying edges and their sharpness.

I forgot a grandmother who threw empty bottles at a toddler’s face.

I forgot staring at a photograph of a baby with belly larger than head and later arguing with my math teacher, “Two negatives do not equal a positive!”

I forgot the white light, white roses, white silk, white lace and white pearls that adorned my wedding—instead I remember this happy day included the whisper, “Mama, glass is easily broken …”

I forgot the original human born only because bamboo was split.

I forgot the lucidity of ancient mountains.

I forgot receiving a scar on my cheek while an emerald mountain wept.

I forgot no one else noticing the diminishing moon’s tiptoe across the night sky.

I forgot pausing to scratch with a missing finger.

I forgot stuffing doves into burlap bags.

I forgot an ascetic’s illusion of ecstasy will always be illusion due to its condition precedent: a suffering so unmitigated it hollowed non-survivors from children to earthworms.

I forgot a “Mom” and “Dad” bringing me to a turquoise house cheered by kittens and where I learned meals will be finished and still there will be food for the next.

I forgot immersing myself in a sea until, chin just topping salty water, my head became attached to the entire planet.

I forgot imagination cannot alchemize air into protein.

I forgot other boys like Samuel and Elwin whose bones became transparent.

© Eileen Tabios

///

Barry Schwabsky

Decus et Tutamen

Head wide under rusted flowers

can’t commit but war may change your mind

love knows only love

so leave philosophy under the mattress

oxygen body, chemical music

or decomposition

so catch (as catch can)

the snow on your lip

an underlying grid structure: lace

in a station somewhere in the wilderness

years pass, too late for me

I heard its glow

sipped the milk of the instant

baby eyesore

calamitous sun

we should not abandon ourselves

collections of pearls, ashes, tears

of carnivorous paint

the gap between me and the air

the idea that eats us

intensified with my name

I’ll send your little friends up

a voluntary accident

someone doesn’t know as lettered coinage.

 © Barry Schwabsky

///