Today’s choice

Previous poems

Dmitry Blizniuk for World Poetry Day

 

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…
 

інкарнація.
Бог у потертих замаслених джинсах як автослюсар
прикурює нове життя від старого.
нову сигарету від недопалка.
але ти лише вогник
між двома світами, викуреними натщесерце.
а Бог видихає не дим, але пам’ять
життів…
Дмитро Близнюк (с)

 

 

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.

Hilary Hares

The Crofton Road home team play football with the moon

They have no kit to speak of but compensate
with unshakeable belief they’ll ace the cup.

Sue Finch 

The moon is a Punch in the sky.

A boy is carrying a bruise.

And nobody is talking to either of them
about ordinary things.

Gerry Stewart

      In My Last Phone Call Did I say it looks like rain? I meant the sky is black with a thirst only crying can quench, clouds smothering the hills. Did I say this was my home? It was a mistake. The walls are collapsing even as I paint myself into a...