The Memory of Lives

incarnation.
God in his worn, greasy jeans like a car mechanic
is lighting a new life from an old one.
a new cigarette from a cigarette butt.
and you are merely a flame
between the two worlds, smoked on an empty stomach.
while he breathes out not smoke, but the memory
of lives…
 

Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Plume, The London Magazine, Guernica,  Denver Quarterly,  Pleiades and many others.  A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). His poems have been awarded RHINO 2022  Translation Prize.  He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.
Directory: http://www.pw.org/directory/writers/dmitry_blizniuk
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Sergey Gerasimov (translator) is a Ukraine-based writer, poet, and translator of poetry. Among other things, he has studied psychology. He is the author of several academic articles on cognitive activity. His stories and poems written in English have appeared in Adbusters, Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, J Journal, The Bitter Oleander, and Acumen, among many others. His last book is Oasis published by Gypsy Shadow. The poetry he translated has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes.