Valiantsina Aksak

When looking

When looking for a day’s happiness-
finish off the bottle.
When looking for a week’s happiness –
roast a turkey.
When looking for a month’s happiness –
take a husband.
When looking for a century of happiness –
tend to the flowers
in your old man’s garden.
(Translated from Belarusian)

Maryia Vaitsiashonak

An ordered life

When you’ve not filled
the stove with wood
for tomorrow
nor fetched
water
from the well
then you’ve no
future
only a dreary, lingering
today
(Translated from Belarusian)

Untitled

Once the light
is out
the hut
closes
its eyes
the crunching
bones of the
old wardrobe
shelves
put themselves
to bed
at dawn you discover
a nail on the floor
like a pin
from a woman’s
hair
the hut is alive
(Translated from Belarusian)

Volha Hronskaya

Untitled

When I enter the kitchen,
to wash the dishes,
I call myself Agatha.
I’d have liked something
more romantic, but
what to do
I’m no nymph.
Agatha.
Forty, divorced, in creative crisis,
and I hate washing the dishes.
Since childhood I remember
how dishes begat rituals.
Heat up the water
fill a big basin
dunk, scrub, lift
all without soap
so the crumbs
can be fed to the pigs
you scrub flowers on a white plate
with slippery fingers
and you hate washing the dishes.

I once read that:
when you wash the dishes
you should think on the dishes
and this gives a moment
a feeling of self
I think:
maybe that’s the reason
for my diagnoses, crises, desires?
I hate washing the dishes
and I don’t feel.
But
when water trickles through my fingers
they feel wet.
Perhaps I can be cured.
(Translated from Belarusian)

Olga Zlotnikova

Untitled

To Misha

To Misha
Before you understand
that you’re travelling platskart
in a blue carriage
on the train from Minsk to Sevastopol
The sun will fall
a white shuttlecock
beyond the forest
and all shall be dark

For now there is tea
in a cupholder, on the ledge
pink sausage slices on bread
passengers chew silently
the sullen attendant passes by
You climbed to the top bunk
sky stretching out
sky never ending
a pale blue in the midday haze
Trees will flicker endlessly
trees in dark clusters
and those fields upon fields
A longing more than longing
under a July sky
on the train from Minsk to Sevastopol
The radio forever buzzing
songs pressing as the heat
songs which must be shed
like burnt skin
or discarded like cigarette butts
out the window, into the wind
face shielded from ash
my love, we’re still moving
sun leaning to the west
nature fathomless
beyond the carriage glass
blurred by the scratching
nails of a bored little boy
I’m afraid to tell you
that you won’t see the sea
the splendid Black Sea
it’s already night now
the sky darker than never
my boy
don’t lie on the edge
of the top bunk
in the platskart carriage
of the train from
Minsk to Sevastopol
(Translated from Russian)

Nadezhda Kokhnovich

Untitled

You’re weird mama, like a swimming pool
you have to think less in your head
why don’t you want nice hair?
I took out the hairclip, I made your hair beautiful,
shake it out!
what if crocodiles climbed out of all the bins?
and what if birds stole the car?
they’d go all over town, making accidents
what if you had three heads?
what a pretty scarfy you have mama
glorybetoukraine, what a beauty you are!
you, mama, are a French princess
no, a French policewoman!
what do animals have claws for?
and what if their claws reached up to space?
what if a planet gets pulled down,
tied to a statue and pulled down?
and then what if snakes slither downstairs,
but upstairs there aren’t any, what then?
and what would happen if you clip monkeys’ nails?
and are there electric screws?
and will you tell papa about grandad’s questions
from before?
and what if there is a body?
and what if you dance inside a rocket?
and if you turn the tap on so loads of water comes out?
and if you turn the tap on, shut the door and run away?
what if there’s a juice flood?
what if there’s a chocolate flood?
and if there was a big flood in our house
would we have to, like, swim in the water?
and then what if everything rots?
I’d better not think about it
it’s like a nightmare!
(Translated from Russian)

Iryna Dubianetskaia

This is no tree

No
that’s
no tree
that grows in me
roots upward
but – flame
fanned by the wind
that burnt my tree
its nest and blossom
it thirsts to burn me too
but the tree
I grow in
forbids it
his crown
touches
the clouds
(Translated from Belarusian)

Nastia Shakunova

Apple tree

We’ll play at buttons or coins
pull out a long stick
from the shed, or a slingshot
to knock apples from high branches
nearby is a pond with rusted locks
the bottom covered with silted skeletons
of carp, frogs, and statues
but not one boat
The oak and foundations
 of a ruined bathhouse on the street side
naked women doused each other with water
from zinc buckets
washing children in basins
later used to boil ripe berries in
scooping off the foam with a big wooden spoon
and they would sleep
when the sun set
topping and tailing
if all together
We’ll pull out a long stick from the shed
and play at buttons or coins
(Translated from Russian)

Vera Burlak

Lullaby

Sleep, my son
Cockroaches scurry over plaster,
Screeching pipes moulder.
My love, slumber on.
The schizophrenic neighbour
Takes aim
But his rocks miss
Our window pane.
Shh, don’t wake.
On the stairwell someone’s shooting.
They’re at the door, it’s shaking.
Someone’s climbing through the window
Caught in the drapes, flapping
Like in a spiderweb, hanging
But that was a long time ago
That corpse long cold as snow
Sleep my sweetheart.
Planes over cities spinning
Tails flaming.
Wings lodge in graves below,
Each hole filled with an arrow.
Bullets buzz about the road
This is no gunman attack
In fact
The wind carries them on its back.
Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack
A black veil lay on the floor
All is shut at the store
Moms and Dads left to snore.
Only I’m, like that elephant, not sleeping.
Someone is quietly singing
About those drinking,
Teeth tapping
On their glass of Valerian tea
This is a lullaby for thee.
A palace of old postcards, built by spiders.
A wood waits, frozen, for the loggers’ sawing.
Golden bells hang in the air ringing.
My son, my son.
My darling soundly sleeping.
Dreaming of me.

(Translated from the Belarusian)

Hanna Komar

Body in Progress

On the road there isn’t a flower or tear
Just a bell in my ear ringing…
I want to be my own body again

not red, nor white, nor black
or hands holding rebuke
but barefoot upon the grass

I take a thimble to wear
and stroke your hair
when I use my fingers this way
imagine my heart

a woman alive
not a banner raised,
nor a hope,
I want to give myself
my voice and body back,

maybe I never wanted anything more
than that…


(Translated from the Belarusian)

*

Nathan Jeffers (ig: @jikooo) is a translator, writer, and teacher. He translates from Russian and Ukrainian into English; translations released in 2024 include the posthumous memoir Socrates the Skinhead, the Life of a Russian Antifascist (Active Distribution) and The Art of Ukraine (Thames and Hudson).by Alisa Lozhkina. His translations and other writings have appeared in the Asymptote Journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books blog, RHINO poetry, and Pocket Samovar. He is also currently working on translation projects with Oxford University, UK and Rutgers University, USA.    

Valiantsina Aksak: Born in 1953, she holds a degree in history and has worked as a journalist. She has published 9 poetry books and lives in Minsk.

Maryja Vajciašonak: Born in 1940. A trained teacher and journalist she is the author of books of essays, stories, memoirs and children’s fairy tales. She has written 6 books of poetry and lives in Belarus.

Volha Hronskaya: Born in 1978, she is a poet and a prize-winning translator from German into Belarusian. She lives in Minsk.

Olga Zlotnikova: Born in 1987. A graduate of Belarus State University, she has published two poetry books and lives in Minsk.

Nadezhda Kokhnovich: Born in 1988. She is a translator, essayist and editor. She has one book of poetry published and she lives in Minsk.

Iryna Dubianetskaia: Born in 1964. A doctor of sacred theology, she has worked as an editor and university lecturer. She has published poetry under pseudonyms in various publications and lives in Minsk.

Nastia Shakunova: Born in 1989, she has self-published one collection of poetry as well as online and she lives between Homiel and Minsk.

Vera Burlak: Born in 1977, she is a writer, translator and performer. Her poems and short stories have been translated into German, English, Czech, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Esperanto. Since 2023, Vera Burlak has been living with her family in Stuttgart.

Hanna Komar: Born in 1989, she is a poet, translator and writer.She has published five collections of poetry. Her work has been translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Czech, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Danish, Italian and Russian. A Freedom of Speech 2020 Prize laureate from the Norwegian Authors’ Union. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Brighton and lives in London.