Articles Available Online

(POEM FOR ZHADAN)   This (my) country will be the death of you Its military mathematics Its secret services Its illusions and constructs Its lack of scruple Its mendacious depravity But I like your fury   I doubt we’ll strike an agreement   These creatures, these imperial demons Rip out their organ of speech Yours and mine it is to rip out From common reason Our assurance that they speak what we speak Our assurance in speech Our body is not to be made Their immediate hostage   Be more cunning I want you to be safe and sound At the very center of hellfire Employ scouts Enlist traitors Keep a gun under your pillow Kick ‘em under the knee, slit their tendons Otherwise we won’t make it We are betrayed on every side Only you No traitor are to me   Trust me Otherwise we won’t make it   We are the brains of this war It all depends on us only   Children of city limits We carry Mace and brass knuckles in our pocket We carry the main words in our heart For the requiem of soldiers and bandits       MY UKRAINIAN FAMILY: SECOND GRANDMOTHER    I didn’t like her as a child She either said nothing or gloomily joked Her Russian (as it was later found out, part Crimean Greek) husband was taken prisoner near Smolensk He died in ‘44 in the camps As it was found out by my Brother’s godfather Lena Isayeva sent A photo of the monument   She paid no attention to us, children She only cared for her cow At 4 in the morning she got up to milk   Her prayers before the icons Of Saint Nicholas and the Holy Mother of God Made of paper, in casing of cheap hard foil Frightened me A mug of raw milk at six in the morning Annoyed me Especially the flecks inside But on the whole I enjoyed The taste, and put up with Being woken early, to fall back asleep Until the whole family rose Around nine   Because she knew how to milk And spoke some German She survived, first the collectivization When she, the daughter of a suppressed farmer from near Kharkov, Was sent to an ethnic German cooperative in Russia proper, And after that she wound up under occupation   How airplanes turned over the Don How bombs fell on bridges How nice the Germans and the Hungarians were afterwards And how boys sledded on corpses They poured water over My brother and I would learn from our father   Her hands were dry and