Thirty-Two Days Without Alcohol

By SERHIY ZHADAN

Translated by OSTAP KIN

A good day is a day
without bad news.
Sometimes everything turns out fine—
no news,
no fiction.

Three thousand steps to the supermarket
frozen chickens
like dead stars
gleam after death.

All you need is
mineral water,
I only
need my mineral water.
Execs, like
frozen chickens,
are hatching
the eggs
of profit
in the twilight.

Three thousand steps back.
All I need to do is hold on
to my mineral water,
to hold on to
the countdown:
thirty-two days without alcohol
thirty-three days without alcohol
thirty-four days without alcohol.

Birds perch on each of my shoulders,
and the one on the left keeps repeating:
thirty-two days without alcohol
thirty-three days without alcohol
thirty-four days without alcohol.

And the one on the right responds:
twenty-eight days till a bender
twenty-seven days till a bender
twenty-six days till a bender.

And the one on the left is drinking the blood of Christ
from a silver chalice.
And the one on the right—the simpler one—
is drinking some crap,
some diet coke.

On top of that
they’re both drinking
on my tab.

 

[Purchase Issue 12 here.]

Serhiy Zhadan, Ukrainian poet, fiction writer, essayist, and translator, was born in the Luhansk region in 1974 and has published over a dozen books. In 2014 he received the Ukrainian BBC’s Book of the Decade Award; he won the Ukrainian BBC’s Book of the Year Award in 2006 and in 2010. He’s the recipient of the Hubert Burda Prize for Young Poets (Austria, 2006) and the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature (Switzerland, 2014).

Ostap Kin has published work in St. Petersburg Review and Krytyka Magazine. He lives in New York City.

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Thirty-Two Days Without Alcohol

Related Posts

Image of a a large yellow Weeping Willow tree against a bright blue sky.

Selections from Lettres en forêt urbain

BERTRAND LAVERDURE
Your saffron-colored sticks flatter my circular daydreams. The road is a second-hand dealer of wood who doesn’t mark their prices. A colony of bags, spare with its conclusions. You are the lookout post of a dead stream. Calm like a descent, breath held [...]

Glass: Five Sonnets

MONIKA CASSEL
In ’87 I see guardsmen walk their AK-47s / on the platforms. The trains slow down but never stop. I think, / my mother was born in such a different Germany, but this is true for everyone / —so why can’t I stop looking?