Poetry

Anna Malihon: Poems from Ukraine

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry, Translation, Ukraine Portfolio

By ANNA MALIHON
Translated by OLENA JENNINGS

YLANG-YLANG

in the thick halo of insects, the lamp resembles
a mature dandelion
the girl as pale as bandages incessantly conjures spells
I can’t make out the words
I am still there where there is roaring and how…
…ling
unbridled nature has undone me thoroughly
I lay like a stunned fish in the lord’s hand
and a thought about water fills a warm sea
bordering the land’s illuminated wounds
that the worms, animals and feathered messengers
visited while searching for sustenance
and instead of my arm a bamboo shoot hangs out
gathering strength
and in my hand someone has placed
the globe of this complicated world
exhaling: live
I don’t have enough strength to close my eyes in shame
or scream get away from me, I’m alone
alone I’m alone, give me back my hand
how now to overcome the grand piano’s mouth of silence
and toss a baby up to the sun
the bamboo will only be good for a flute
but I lack enough breath even for that
a tall girl with a gaze like the Mother of God
murmurs seeds of words upon the tiles
the mocking moon peeks through a hole burnt
in the tulle: time to go
and now in the cottony silence, a yellow
melody of resurrection pushes its way through
like a ylang-ylang flower
and a damaged airplane like a lost petal
returns to the sky
and the little boy with my hands embroiders the collected sounds
I exhale so loudly that the dandelion’s
circle of insects dissipates
dawn…

[IT FELT LIKE BLOOD]

It felt like blood
on the floor of the subway car,
like sticky patterns of footprints—my new identity…

It felt like someone had turned me into
a bucket of strawberries,
and forgotten about it…
And the platform like a safe haven
and the—red beginnings of love—
between heart and throat.

I woke up as if no one was shooting,
only boys wander in
one stands nearby with a pistol,
and—bang-bang!—into the void…

But suddenly not just a crater—
But a black pit in the chest.
And tiny red droplets.

I am eating one strawberry—for the sick brother,
another, smaller one—for the son,
I am eating the slightly crushed one for him
who crushed my heart over the years.
And the last one—the biggest, the shiniest—
for my father who was never a father to me.

Put down your toy death.
Go, return the sun’s face
to the longest night for me.
Here are peonies and June,
and soldiers tightly standing.
And never,
never will anyone leave you again…

[THE POEMS BETWEEN US GREW SHORTER]

The poems between us grew shorter
until everything unwound into a single letter
with a period
which you turned on its head
because you liked exclamatory endings…
Finally, everything went quiet.
I became still as a white shell in the Paleozoic era.
I wish I hadn’t written words, biting my lip.
I wish I hadn’t written on the water with my fingertips.
I wish I hadn’t turned circles into a delicate zero…
You destroyed my Universe, flipped, abandoned
Forgot the address
Forgot the lanterns with flames in the window
Only letters
gnaw at memory
like mice gnaw at last year’s feed sack.
Short poems come with freedom for the blind.
Long poems come with a cage for those with sight.

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

Anna Malihon is an award-winning Ukrainian poet and the author of six books of poetry and a novel. Her work has been published in numerous Ukrainian literary journals and translated into Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, Georgian, Armenian, and French. In 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion forced her to leave Ukraine. She lives in Paris, France.

Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collection The Age of Secrets, the chapbook Memory Project, and the novel Temporary Shelter. She is a translator of collections by Ukrainian poets Kateryna Kalytko (co-translated with Oksana Lutsyshyna), Iryna Shuvalova, Vasyl Makhno, Yuliya Musakovska, and Anna Malihon. She lives in Queens, New York.

The Universal Set

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By PEDRO POITEVIN
Translated by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV

I am myself a member of myself
and every time I search within I find
another me, mysteriously aligned,
and in that replica wherein I delve

there dwells another, and another yet,
ellipsis dots: a mammoth nesting doll
that both contains itself, containing all,
and self-inhabits, the set of all sets.

I am the madness of the grand design,
I am the limit of where reason goes,
I am the science behind metascience.

The endless universe of sets is mine,
and this includes the cheeky set of those
denying my existence in defiance.

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

Pedro Poitevin, a bilingual poet, translator, and mathematician originally from Guatemala, is the author of six books of poetry. His work has appeared in Rattle, River Styx, The Mathematical Intelligencer, and Nimrod, among other publications. In 2022, he received the Juana Goergen Poetry Prize, and in 2025, the Premio Internacional de Literatura Palindrómica Rever.

Philip Nikolayev is a poet living in Boston, raised in Moldova. He translates poetry from French, Romanian, Ukrainian, Hindi, Urdu, and Sanskrit. His collections include Monkey Time and Letters from Aldenderry. His collection of poems in Spanish translation by Willy Ramírez and Pedro Poitevin, Un poeta desde el balcón, has been published in Latin America.

Every Other Weekend

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

Winner of the 2025 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry

By CARSON WOLFE

The morning after I had woken to him
holding his flashlight beneath my bedsheets,

I told him I felt too sick to go to school.
It’s always confused me, why I chose

to stay in his house another full day,
waiting for my mother to finish work.

Like any other, we played chess
just like he’d taught me, and he let me win.

Something broken and unnameable
hanging between us—perhaps it is me,

writing this poem, watching myself
shrink as a ten-year-old, watching him

sacrifice another pawn. From this angle,
it occurs to me, after all these years,

that he knew I was going to tell.
And now I am afraid for that little girl.

How much easier it all could have been
had I tripped at the top of the stairs.

It must have crossed his mind
as those silent hours came to a close.

He didn’t reach over the gear stick
to rub my thigh on the drive home,

only stared out at the barriers
as we crossed Barton Bridge.

I always believed him
to be pathetic, a coward of a man,

but we pulled up outside my mum’s house
and he opened the door, let me out.

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

Carson Wolfe is a Mancunian poet and the grand prize winner of the 2025 DISQUIET International Literary Prize. Their work has appeared with Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, and Rattle, amongst others. Their new book Coin Laundry at Midnight is forthcoming with Button Poetry in spring 2026.

Ars Poetica: Getaway Car

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By JEN JABAILY-BLACKBURN

Telekinesis stories are the girliest stories because they don’t stop
at The Body. They say your borders are so made up. Girlhood is more
than ovaries tossing replica moons at the feet of The Moon.
Our home address is a syntax that serpentines like a mouse
attempting to cross, unperceived, the grandest of ballrooms.
That’s us, always leaping into the getaway car of daydream,
lit up lavender & tangerine. We are dancing with our mouths
like no one is listening because no one is listening but us.
It’s the wild freedom of silly gooseness, feathers to cushion being told
you’re useless, repeatedly, while still being used for everything. It’s waiting
in the waiting room’s washed-out light thinking I am
an exhausted mine. No matter how much care you pour into it,
The Body’s narrative is betrayal. This expirational thing.
Do you really want us to end there?

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the author of Girl in a Bear Suit and works as the program and outreach coordinator for The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College. Originally from Braintree, Massachusetts, she now lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts, with her family. For more, find her at www.jenjabailyblackburn.com.

Polka

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By ROBERT CORDING

They could have danced straight out
of a Brueghel painting into our basement,
partially finished in fake wood paneling
and a dropped ceiling that still left
some plumbing exposed—

October 2025 Poetry Feature: From DEAR DIANE: LETTERS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY

October 23, 2025 Poetry

By TINA CANE

Photo of Tina Cane by Cormac Crump

On DEAR DIANE: LETTERS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY
Between May 1968 and December 1971, poet Diane Di Prima wrote a poetry collection comprised of sixty-three “Revolutionary Letters.” Several years ago, I purchased a rare set of the first thirty-four of Di Prima’s letter poems—typed on long sheets of construction paper, stapled, and hand-corrected in ballpoint pen. Bought as a celebratory gift for myself, after having been awarded a fellowship, it’s a humble yet fierce extravagance. While the booklet appears sturdy, its yellowed pages are somewhat delicate. I rarely handle it—too worried about spilling coffee, or having someone in my house mistake the unassuming bundle for recycling. Most of the time, my sheath of Di Prima poems sits in my bookcase, atop a row of books by Marguerite Duras.

September 2025 Poetry Feature: Earth Water Fire Poems, a Conversation

September 25, 2025 Poetry

Poems and sculptures by LISA ASAGI

This is a conversation with whales, clay, and poetry.

A wonderment with whales began in a childhood alivened by the early days of the Save the Whales movement and stories from my father of mysterious encounters on overnight boating trips. This fascination resurfaced seven years ago when I found myself working with my hands—clay sculpture and stand-up paddling led to long overdue reconnections with both earth and sea. Research deepened my curiosity: before the centuries of whaling, very different kinds of relationships existed between whales and humans. Here in the 21st century, what’s possible? These pieces are part of an ongoing series of rememberings, imaginings, longings, and offerings.

— Lisa Asagi

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

August 28, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By ANNA MALIHON

Translated from the Ukrainian by OLENA JENNINGS

From Girl with a Bullet, forthcoming October 2025

Presented in Olena Jennings’ seamless translation, Anna Malihon’s new collection, Girl with a Bullet, is one of the most important books of the year for those with an interest in the fate of Ukraine, a gift to Anglophone readers.

—John Hennessy, poetry editor

Table of Contents:

[The girl with a bullet in her stomach]

[Don’t go into that home]

[Now the only thing that you can do for her, Christ,]

[Unfold and dive into me, to my very bone,]

Talks with the Besieged: Documentary Poetry from Occupied Ukraine

August 21, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By ALEX AVERBUCH

Translated by OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK, MAX ROSOCHINSKY, and the author

Piece appears below in English and the original Russian and Ukrainian.

Translators’ Note

Alex Averbuch authored Talks with the Besieged on the basis of his engagement with group chats on Telegram and other public IM platforms by Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. The present selection is excerpted from this larger work that explores the relentless and evolving nature of the occupation, capturing the initial bewilderment and disorientation experienced by those who stayed behind. These brief, fragmented exchanges reflect civilians navigating the chaos of war in real time. Oscillating between found poetry, a digital archive, and virtual testimony, the text presents the fears, anxieties, aspirations, and dreams of the community enduring liminality and existential uncertainty. In translating these dispatches, we’ve attempted to approximate the casual, matter-of-fact tone of participants, their poignant attempts to lighten the mood, encourage each other, and offer reassurance and consolation.While Telegram and many other IM platforms offer automatic capitalization for each new comment, we decided to use lowercase letters instead, capitalizing only toponyms and proper names. We have also removed the names of the original contributors, blurring the distinctions between them and obscuring where one utterance ends and another begins. We hope that these decisions help render the text as a continuous uninterrupted expression of hope and terror and create an impression of a living chorus, a droning and wailing unbroken human voice.