Donbas Days
this is not the fault of the people but it is
the people’s problem
a lack of nerve
a chance to make a little meat
and unemployment like a flood
one’s clear-cut stand cursed
insulted in the russian way
the granary in moscow or the granary in kyiv
is not in my pocket; not in my home
glory on-screen
and condescension in person
my common worm
my lost and common heart
stay here and wake the people up?
people at home have yet to wake
fortune and function
our red slogan
our well-read hands
armed with figures
geologic conditions
to bring the regime
to its mundane knees
Accounting
Night falls and Klava can’t find sleep.
Fourteen again, war over,
she harvests hay with Old Semyon.
They hitch the wagon to the cows and ride
behind the combine. Klava above,
Semyon below. He tosses hay,
she tamps it down under her feet.
One of the cows must be her cow,
survivor of the occupation
almost slaughtered by the liberating army.
A famous village cow,
in that she was good. And when
the army boys took her, to turn her
into meat, Klava’s mother ran
to the commanding general
and insisted on the cow’s return.
Most nights Klava sees again—the hay,
the cows, the wagon, Old Semyon.
As she tells her story the sun falls
behind the tree line, the screen darkens.
Her image pixelates to dusk.
As I tell it to you now
I see it all again, before me,
and I don’t know why I remember.
Landshaft
The slagheap dominates
the landscape. A new kurgan
for a new age. High grave, waste mound.
To think of life
among the mountains—
that clean, clear air—
and realize that you’ve been breathing
shit. Plant trees
around the spoil tip! Appreciate
the unnatural charm! Green fold,
gray pile. Still, the heap can smolder
and combust. Meanwhile, cows
remain cows. Reservoirs stay reservoirs,
unless run-off, dumpsites
for the local plant.
The plundered hills mark anthracite,
or antique stags of gold.
Inverted earth extracts its price: decay.
Sasha Burshteyn’s poetry appears in The Yale Review, The Paris Review Daily, Four Way Review, Copper Nickel, and Pigeon Pages. She holds degrees from Amherst College and New York University, where she was a Goldwater Fellow, and serves as translations editor at Four Way Review. She was born in Russia and raised in Brooklyn and Donbas.
