Blizniuk Dmitry (Дмитрий Близнюк), Kharkiv, Ukraine
the average speed of war is 57 deaths per hour
the ghosts will enter you
like wood smoke
turning back into trees
while sucking the gray light from your eyes
средняя скорость войны — 57 смертей в час
все призраки войдут в тебя
как дым костра
обратно в деревья
высасывая серый свет из глаз
Anastasia Zelenova (Анастасия Зеленова), Moscow, Russia
What’s new with you?
smoke billows billows billows
willows willows willows
rows rows
Filling the line end to end
the hand
scrawls:
smoke billows _ _ _
Что у вас нового?
дым дым дым
сады сады сады
ряды ряды
Пока не кончится строка,
рука –
выводит:
дым_ _ _
Vadim Zhuk (Вадим Жук), Saint Petersburg, Russia
All that’s left of the baby is the rattle.
All that’s left of the granny is her knitting.
Who would dare ask what punishment is fitting
For our boys, with their shaven napes and temples,
For our mother-hen mommies, kind and simple,
For our timid-mouse girls with braids and dimples,
For our old-timey towns and quiet hamlets,
For our fairy-tale bears, cuckoos, froggies,
For our home-made sweet rolls and pierogies?
Mittens? Socks? What was she knitting that day?
She hadn’t time to say. She didn’t say.
От дитяти осталась игрушка,
От старушки осталось вязанье.
Ну каким может быть наказанье
Нашим мальчикам — бритым макушкам.
Нашим мамушкам — Рябам-несушкам,
Нашим девушкам — мышкам-норушкам.
Нашим Омскам, Смоленскам, Перхушковым.
Нашим мишкам, кукушкам, лягушкам,
Нашим плюшкам, ватрушкам и сушкам?
А носки или шарфик вязала,
Не успела сказать, не сказала.
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Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Kharkiv, Ukraine. His poems have appeared in Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Denver Quarterly, The London Magazine, Guernica, Plume, 128 LIT, and American Chordata, among others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest. His poems have been awarded the RHINO 2022 Translation Prize.
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Born in 1982, Anastasia Zelenova studied Philology at Nizhny Novgorod State University, named after N.I. Lobachevsky. She has lived in Moscow since 2007. Her writing appears in the magazines Vozdukh and Ural, and her poetry collections Poetry Notebook of the Inhabitant and Living on Sufferance were published by the New York publishing house Ailuros in 2013 and 2015.
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Vadim Zhuk, a major contemporary poet writing in Russian, was born in Leningrad in 1947. Vadim graduated from Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinema (LGITMiK). Upon graduation, he earned his living as an actor in theaters of Siberia, in addition to working other jobs. He has authored ten books of poetry. He also writes for the theater.
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Yana Kane came to the United States as a refugee from the USSR. She holds a BSE from Princeton University, and a PhD in Statistics from Cornell University. Having retired after a successful technical career, she is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her recent and upcoming publications include 128 LIT, American Chordata, Arkansas International, The Los Angeles Review, Platform Review, RHINO Poetry, and View.Point. View.Point recognized her translations as among the “Best of 2022.” She is the winner of the 2023 RHINO Poetry Translation Prize. 128 LIT nominated her translation for the Deep Vellum Best Literary Translations Anthology 2025. Her bilingual poetry book, Kingfisher/Зимородок, was published in 2020. She is a contributor to the forthcoming anthology of anti-war poetry, Dislocation (ed. Julia Nemirovskaya and Anna Krushelnitskaya, Slavica Press, 2024). Yana Kane is grateful to Bruce Esrig for editing her English-language texts.
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Char Gardner is a visual artist and creative nonfiction writer, who taught in the Washington, DC area for nearly twenty years before she began working with her husband, Rob Gardner. Together they made documentary films internationally for over thirty years. Now retired, they live in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where Char is at work on a memoir. Her recent drawings are made with oil sticks on Arches 22X30 paper. Imagery is derived from the human form (working directly from a live model) and from the surrounding natural world. Her essays have been published in The Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. She received the Carol Houck Smith award from The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2013.
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