from Покинутим кораблям (2012) and Розарій (2020), to be collected in Girl with a Bullet (forthcoming Sept. 2025)
Translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings
stay
endure
this piercing late-may cold
your cigarette will go out before the ash does
touches the lilacs
below
it isn’t the lilac of sweet and bitter five-petal desires
and not the moon that eyed the love that wasn’t for us
it’s so cold walking along the rails
along that long steel condemnation stretching into dawn
hoarfrost
smoke and fog
and who knows—is it early autumn or late spring
from one who didn’t love to one
who at least understood
night lengthening into an incurable sickness
this isn’t that arrival and that departure
this isn’t that man walking his dog below someone else’s balcony
only a scar that burns above my lip
only my dog-like faithfulness
stay
endure
surely someone will understand you…
We went out early…no dawn no stars no rushing
fresh rain, no distant voices
nothing holds me up—hazy horizons lie ahead
transparent blood seeps into the veins of branches.
I memorized this path—like an abyss in wheat’s embrace
My footsteps already stitched through the path last summer
I ran like a tear drop through the bends of dreadful laughter
where no one will find us. They stopped looking here long ago
Here the inept postman loses unknown addresses
here untimely words hang like night above a pool of water
here pink little children rush into life like bullets
slumbering snows repentantly wail in the drainpipes
This isn’t us flying—straight ahead—like sleds through a field
these aren’t the least of our journeys between the poles
they rip almost without hurting—and finally
We look around—who is the stoniest stone?
…The proud don’t turn back. The wise don’t go, and who
will stop us from settling here and living between the window panes
forgetting about the path, listening to the blizzard?
this is how tenderness is born in your transportable body
A Serpent’s Child
The boy buries his head in grandma’s
many layered ruffles.
The boy with freckles in the shape of swallows on his fingers
on his shoulders (they say that once his mother
destroyed a swallows’ nest.)
He sobs, claims that the flowers in the distant beds
are watching him.
The boy sees himself through the eyes of flowers.
Beneath his bed he keeps an egg in a box.
Soon a real serpent will hatch from it.
How cool is that—to have your own serpent.
Then you will not be frightened of flowers or dogs or anyone who sits
up in the tree branches throwing apples
at your back.
Grandma whispers: Why did you punish us with this child, for what?!
Her daughter sends clothing from the U.S. and never gets the size right
sends toys that he doesn’t need.
The boy was warming the snake for a long time.
Tomorrow the flowers will all go blind.
The telegrams will stop.
Even the dust on the icons ages.
Grandma prays to return to her nest.
But the swallows separate the sky from the grass.
And an amethyst strike of lightening moves
like a crack through an egg shell...
No Questions
I remember my mother’s lips precisely
They moved like tulips come to life
obscenely close to the phone
“The question is out of the question”
She said to someone
And I imagined how the question mark swayed
Couldn’t right itself and just hung
fastened to the night by its hook
And on it were bunches of keys, to all the doors
behind which were riddles
answers and mysteries
But I wandered hoping to find
the room with the presents
I never ventured to ask
because what if my question also got lost
Such a small space for all the doors
Such a small mouth for all these daring questions
Such a large pause between the moon and love
But I wanted those presents so badly
Every time I passed out
beaten and black and blue
She kissed and apologized
promising a doll
See the thirty dolls my love
Thirty of the nicest dolls
from the local department store
almost untouched
We moved five times in my first five years
Two broken bones in the next five
Then one more broken bone—an important one
at about twelve
When all the questions finally
definitively disappeared
I’m a winter infant
Who sleeps in a seashell’s blanket
And the future will be good to me
Only love for the moon and my future
I bring her tulips every year
and someone steals them
Let go of me
Stop
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, included in several anthologies, 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 (Lost Horse Press), the chapbook Memory Project, and the novel Temporary Shelter (Cervena Barva Press). She is the translator of collections by Ukrainian poets Kateryna Kalytko (co-translated with Oksana Lutsyshyna), Iryna Shuvalova, and Vasyl Makhno. Her translation of Yuliya Musakovska’s The God of Freedom was released in 2024 from Arrowsmith Press. She lives in Queens, New York where she founded and curates the Poets of Queens reading series and press.
World Poetry Review 