A Translator
by Nina Kossman
I looked through old photos, I wrote to archives in Latvia and in Ukraine, and of course, I talked to my parents, but they were already very old and sick by then. That’s why, when, after a long and complicated correspondence, I was sent a manuscript of my great-grandfather’s memoir in German fro Latvia, I did not turn to my father for a translation…
"I wandered through the city of my youth..." and "One-thousand-year-old Kyiv"
by Vasyl Stus
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Tokarskyi and Uilleam Blacker
I wandered around the city of my youth,
vainly searching, in the new blocks,
for yesterday’s buildings, parks, and paths,
for familiar patterns on pediments,
geography is lost.
Selected Poems
by Ekaterina Simonova
Translated from the Russian by Robin Munby
writing about a city
in which you’ve never set foot
is like trying to have a conversation
with someone who no longer loves you
so much pain lies between you
that language collapses into incomprehensible fragments
Jagged Beaks
by Mary Birnbaum
Atavistic we palm the mist
at the window, hoarding our safe
close shadow. We peer into
the uncertain freedom that once
unfolded monstrous birds
with narrow wings and jagged beaks
like storm waves, like the bite
of mountain range and clouds
nesting hailstones.
Drunk Soliloquy
by Jessica Kim
Someone will parcel memories into the cardboard box and leave them on my doorstep. I will not be not home. Today, I no longer live in this body, fingers unhooking from the discolored sky, feet angling towards the heavens, aimless.
When I moved to the city
by Olena Jennings
Forbidden are the plants that grow around our feet.
Forbidden are the plants that taste like lavender.
Forbidden are the plants that sting with touch.
Forbidden are the plants that fall under our weight.
Forbidden are the plants that point towards the sky.
Forbidden are the plants that can be boiled into tea.
My Anthropocene
by Snežana Žabić
I will live your futurism
If you will live mine
I see wet cement and imagine
softly imprinting my naked
back in that porridge of silicates and oxides
one vertebra at a time
Stopping in Athens
by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
By noon the sun shimmers the city and I know
I should leave. But I have books to buy and stop
at the only English bookstore. Inside, the air is cooled,
It reminds me of a bookstore at home, in America.
An excerpt from the novel "In God's Language"
by Olena Stiazhkina
Translated from the Russian by Uilleam Blacker
They did see each other later, after his wife, Varda, had left—and not just in their dreams. Not often, but they saw each other. They would say hello, they would chat. “Here are mine,” she’d say and show him photographs. First in her wallet, later on, her phone. Revazov didn’t show her any photos.
Reading, Interrupted
by Justina Dobush
Something happened to me this year, even before the reality of the pandemic had sunk in. I lost myself, and that feeling of loss was so profound I thought I would never be able to feel like myself again.
"To break out of this kingdom of crooked mirrors": An Interview with Igor Pomerantsev
Interviewed by Dmytro Kyyan
‘An enemy of the people’ – this is too strong. Our times were the times of selective repressions, not collective, as it used to be under Stalin. There were certain rules of the game and you knew when you were breaking them.
Praise the Mutilated World: A Review of Brad Fox’s To Remain Nameless (2020, Rescue Press)
Reviewed by Clare Needham
“No one loves you anymore,” a Serbian friend tells Tess shortly after the U.S. invades Iraq. “You” refers to all Americans, though Tess doesn’t need to be told. Neither she nor Laura harbor many illusions about their line of work or the lives they lead.
"Reality is much richer and more unexpected than we can imagine": An Interview with Iana Boukova
Interviewed by Khrystia Vengryniuk
I am deeply interested in the relationship between what is said and what is not said in the text, in the balance between what is stated and what should be guessed.
An excerpt from the novella "Welcome, Nathan! — an Act of Literary Genesis"
by Irina Papancheva
Translated from the Bulgarian by Elitza Kotzeva
It was a lot to take—this very hospital, the terror of the needle inside my arm, all that I have gone through, the removal of the last traces. “Do you have children?” asked the nurse trying to distract me while the other one was inserting the IV into my arm. The wrong question again.
"Tell me the name" and "The person with the wound in the head"
by Ali Podrimja
Translated from the Albanian by Genta Nishku
it’s been days been years been centuries
that the person with the wound in the head
remains on the white hospital table
A Life Spent on Short Wave
by Igor Pomerantsev
Translated from the Russian by Frank Williams
You have to be totally devoid of common sense not to believe in mystery. Mystery is there every step we take, literally under our noses. This is something every lathe operator who works with metal, every joiner who works with wood, every sculptor who works with hard, granular and liquid materials knows.
An excerpt from the novel "The Second One's Also Worth Buying"
by Oleg Sentsov
Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella
The morning the aliens attacked us, Jim Harrison was in the bathroom as usual—not because he had an overwhelming physiological need, though Jim himself explained his obscenely long sits on the john as the result of digestive problems.
Copper Flowers
by Andrea Tompa
Translated from the Hungarian by Jozefina Komporaly
Perhaps she’s no longer the same person who has once left. Could she be different at the level of her cells, too? How much time would her mother’s cells need before this could happen to her? And how about the soul? How much time would the soul require?
"Poem for Lena Constante, Itself" and "Me to the Poem At the Warehouse"
by Alina Stefanescu
Candlelight makes it look
as if the hand goes numb
before the throat.
You are the color technician
in a dream warning the woman
who was me before bleach.
