you are ivan and i am ivan
but we’re on opposite sides man
and trench digging has begun

you are moscow’s friendly act
i’m one whose neck is incorrect
the trench digging is all done

the general doesn’t give a fuck
about trenches filled with muck
still he wishes us good luck

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Igor Bozhko is a painter, screenwriter, musician, poet, and actor. He is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and the National Union of Journalists and of the creative association “Mamai.” Bozhko’s paintings are on display at the National Art Museum of Ukraine and other museums, as well as in private collections. In 1988 he published his first book of stories, Memory Paints. The feature film Grafitti was based on his story “Faces on the Clouds”; Bozhko also wrote the script for Kira Muratova’s “Boiler No.6” in her film Three Stories and acted in various motion pictures by Muratova and other directors. He is published in the magazines Smena, Oktyabr, Khreshchatyk, Novyi Mir and several Odessa issues of the Deribasovskaya–Rishel’evskaya almanac. Bozhko’s poetry collections are Dry Grass, Queue, Year of the Sparrow, After the Year of the Sparrow, and Lyrics.

“Fuck this, I’ve got to buy some lipstick!
What are you looking at, old cunt?”
I know my homefolk by their talk
More than their clothes. They are so blunt!
I wince, turn pale, grow numb and dumb,
I eye them and I follow them.
But as I stalk them I am anxious
Not to reveal my homeboy presence.
I’m so alone in London’s desert,
Russian cusswords are my dessert.
I’m drawn wherever Russian speech is,
Like a pooch on the trail of bitches.

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Oleg Dozmorov is a Russian writer, poet and critic born in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 1974. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Vosmistishiya, a 2004 collection of octaves, and Take a look at the hippopotamus (2012), which was awarded the Russian Prize and Moscow Score literary prizes. His poems are translated into Italian, English, Dutch and Ukrainian. His semi-fictional story “Marble Award” was published by Znamia in 2006. Since 2009 he has lived in London.

Let’s put some likes on people dying
And on a hunger strike in jail,
On all those suffering and crying,
On everyone whose life is hell.
But hunger causes us to make
A sandwich, so we take a break
And construct a sandwich
Reinforced with sausage.
We, humble intelligentsia,
Support all the best causes, yea?

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Oleg Dozmorov is a Russian writer, poet and critic born in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 1974. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Vosmistishiya, a 2004 collection of octaves, and Take a look at the hippopotamus (2012), which was awarded the Russian Prize and Moscow Score literary prizes. His poems are translated into Italian, English, Dutch and Ukrainian. His semi-fictional story “Marble Award” was published by Znamia in 2006. Since 2009 he has lived in London.

Scumbags don’t owe the poets anything,
But you’ve decided somehow that you owe us,
Which only goes to show that you don’t know us
Thinking that poems cannot be menacing.
So here’s a poem – visionary boldness –
A prophet’s dream of rights and liberties.
While your patriotland stays strangely wordless.
Devour it! I’m in your antipodes.
War is the patriots’ only motherland,
Their feeders are fable news and fake TV,
They are all lies, delusional and violent.
So your Crimean and Donetsk fans are silent,
Speechless. Don’t you agree? Yes, you agree.

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Oleg Dozmorov is a Russian writer, poet and critic born in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 1974. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Vosmistishiya, a 2004 collection of octaves, and Take a look at the hippopotamus (2012), which was awarded the Russian Prize and Moscow Score literary prizes. His poems are translated into Italian, English, Dutch and Ukrainian. His semi-fictional story “Marble Award” was published by Znamia in 2006. Since 2009 he has lived in London.

after troubles steep
the city’s asleep

the peaty smoky sun festers
shining upon rows of baltica #9 beer bottles
with rampant withdrawal symptoms
and cubes of ice and lard in the kvass soup
while the land’s thief-in-chief
with his court of unbelievers and underbelievers
now all full and sweating
– the blue prison tattoo of mother
oozing a blurry tear –
are sitting down to some stos (Russian faro
with six decks of 52 cards pooled into one coffin)
the dark suits the spades and the clubs
when killed off keep bouncing back revived

the sun will soon sink into the asphalt
and come dusk the whole country
gambled fully away will fall silent
a shank stuck in her side and freeze
in astonishment in the tight plywood pit
of the fourth row of a rerun cinema

ice cream heavily dripping

mica stains reflected in the sightless eyeglasses
as the movie projector’s shutter keeps whirring
though the film broke off in the opening credits

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Sergey Kruglov was born in 1966 in Krasnoyarsk. He lives in Siberia and serves as an Orthodox priest in Minusinsk. He is author of the poetry collections Taking the Serpent from the Cross, Scribal, Folk Songs, Nathan, Zerkaltse, Maranafa, Lazarev Spring, The Queen of the Sabbath and several books of church journalism published in Russia and abroad. He is winner of the Andrei Bely Prize in poetry (2008), the Moscow Score and Antologia prizes, and columnist for the Internet publication Orthodoxy and Peace. In 2013–2016 he was writer and presenter of modern Russian poetry, Poetry, the Movement of Words, on the Russian show Radio Culture.

By the rivers of victorious atheism,
on the banks the Rybinsk Reservoir,
there we sat and wept, yea, when we remembered Zion.
We hung our village harps
upon the pussy willows of that land,
among the hanged.
We were questioned there,
by the nurturers of human souls
who had carried us away captive,
about the lyrics of our songs, and they said:
“Sing us some of those songs of Zion.”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in the hypophrygian sixth mode of the Octoechos
upon the dead waters in a strange land?
We remember neither the tune nor the words,
only the pericope headings.
If I forget thee Jerusalem (I forget),
let the Lord forget the actions of my hands (may He forget, forget)!
Let my tongue cleave
to the roof of my mouth (and it cleaves, sticks, is braced to it)
if I do not remember thee (I won’t),
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy (there is
no more joy, none at all,
only stupor and torpor)!
Remember, O Lord, the children of the USSR
and remind them, who said on the day of Jerusalem’s destruction:
“Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof,
for the time will come when it will rise
and glorify its executioners!”
And o thou unfortunate daughter of the USSR,
angry prophetess, confident
and so inexorably accurate,
happy shall he be that rewardeth thee
as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be that rewardeth us,
who have done a million times more evil
Happy shall he be who seizeth
the idols of your mausolea
and smasheth them on hard stones!
And who also smasheth along with them
us, children of that captivity,
now long grown old.

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Sergey Kruglov was born in 1966 in Krasnoyarsk. He lives in Siberia and serves as an Orthodox priest in Minusinsk. He is author of the poetry collections Taking the Serpent from the Cross, Scribal, Folk Songs, Nathan, Zerkaltse, Maranafa, Lazarev Spring, The Queen of the Sabbath and several books of church journalism published in Russia and abroad. He is winner of the Andrei Bely Prize in poetry (2008), the Moscow Score and Antologia prizes, and columnist for the Internet publication Orthodoxy and Peace. In 2013–2016 he was writer and presenter of modern Russian poetry, Poetry, the Movement of Words, on the Russian show Radio Culture.

the sky is for pilots and the sea is for sailors.
they move around circularly, feeding the flames of war,
but solid land too is within reach, of course,
and far from far.

sing of bohemian brick cellars and of tobacco smoke,
keeping your soil samples clean, don’t intermix the clays,
protect your chitin, don’t let the bastards make a joke
of your verse lines.

remember: you have survived half a million years
and you will live just as long, a seashell, a trilobite;
the style of heroic death doesn’t strike you as quite yours,
you don’t care a mite.

the air is for angels, while fishing control owns the waters,
prowling the waves in a speedboat like a night owl on;
but the vertebrae of the earth and time’s mesozoic lifeforms
are for you alone.

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Gennady Kanevsky is a Moscow poet and essayist. He has been published in Homo Legens, Vozdukh, Volga, Banner, Novy Bereg, New World, October , and Ural. He is the author of six poetry books, a book of selected poems, Séance, and is published in anthologies of Russian and U.S. poetry. He has been a participant in poetry festivals in Russia and Ukraine, the poetic program of the Art Biennale in Thessaloniki, and has had poems translated into English, Italian. Hungarian, Ukrainian and Udmurt. With Anna Russ, he was the winner of the 2007 Moscow Poetry Slam, the Moscow Observer Award (2013), the Megalit Independent Award (2013), October Award (2015), and a Special Award of from Moscow Schyut (Moscow Score) for Seance (2016).

the wind
is blowing away from here
a visitor
came to see him yesterday
from the federal
security service
and clued him in
“fly like the wind
from here in 24 hrs
we will facilitate it
otherwise we will start
with your lesser twisters
and it’ll get worse from there”
his hands shaking
he packed into suitcases
all the leaves
sails
open windows
and buzzing wires
the air tickets and visa
were issued without a snag
and the customs officers
even wished him a fair wind
and smiled
which had never
happened before
so as he is on his way there now
awaiting him by the sea
are the wind driven
power generators
of three universities
of the netherlands
while here
a windless calm has set in
and reigns
just as you have so long
hoped it would

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Gennady Kanevsky is a Moscow poet and essayist. He has been published in Homo Legens, Vozdukh, Volga, Banner, Novy Bereg, New World, October , and Ural. He is the author of six poetry books, a book of selected poems, Séance, and is published in anthologies of Russian and U.S. poetry. He has been a participant in poetry festivals in Russia and Ukraine, the poetic program of the Art Biennale in Thessaloniki, and has had poems translated into English, Italian. Hungarian, Ukrainian and Udmurt. With Anna Russ, he was the winner of the 2007 Moscow Poetry Slam, the Moscow Observer Award (2013), the Megalit Independent Award (2013), October Award (2015), and a Special Award of from Moscow Schyut (Moscow Score) for Seance (2016).

nettles frame the structure
that the snail trail marks
under black roof rafters
riddled with white sparks

a sea of wet dust
covers former people
too brief was their lust
but now they lie deep all

where a storm called out
from the clouds in vain
and lightning struck the ground
cinders remain

in a couple of years
torment will subside
they’ll provide the meds
dinner will be served

quiet is the hospice
and the prayer hoarse
for the lost place
where my country was

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

One of Russia’s outstanding living poets, Alexei Tsvetkov is the founder, with Sergey Gandlevsky, Bakhyt Kenjeev, and Alexander Soprovsky, of the Moscow Time poets’ group. In 1975 he was arrested and deported from Moscow and in the same year emigrated to the United States. He edited the emigre newspaper Russkaya Zhizn (San Francisco, 1976–77) and earned a Ph.D. degree from the  University of Michigan. Tsvetkov taught Russian language and literature at Dickinson College, then worked as an international broadcaster at the Voice of America radio station and later at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich and Prague. Currently, he is a freelance writer based in New York City and Israel.

courage instantly surges
from the glass in the hand
can’t we be like the others
help me understand

amid chaos and decadence
in the head and the street
bitter love’s evanescence
makes hostility sweet

first cadet corps and church
then siberian exile
every lash of the birch
serves to make us more servile

but when wartime returns
our soft gaze will turn stern
drunken ivan will curse
sober ahmed will burn

that’s because education
and ancestral genetics
make us hate with a passion
those who are not like us

just to intimidate you
we have scanned your identity
try to leave and we’ll treat you
to polonium 210 tea

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

One of Russia’s outstanding living poets, Alexei Tsvetkov is the founder, with Sergey Gandlevsky, Bakhyt Kenjeev, and Alexander Soprovsky, of the Moscow Time poets’ group. In 1975 he was arrested and deported from Moscow and in the same year emigrated to the United States. He edited the emigre newspaper Russkaya Zhizn (San Francisco, 1976–77) and earned a Ph.D. degree from the  University of Michigan. Tsvetkov taught Russian language and literature at Dickinson College, then worked as an international broadcaster at the Voice of America radio station and later at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich and Prague. Currently, he is a freelance writer based in New York City and Israel.