Lightning Meets Water and Wind

By Marianna Kiyanovska

From Lightning Meets Water and Wind
Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Anna Halberstadt

***

don’t be silent teach me
to remember this war above all memory
to know if not the whole thing
perhaps half or one third of it
and then I’ll be able to talk
to question to interrogate
to gasp for air to lash out
and mutter to myself

phalanges next to phalanges
teeth next to teeth
eyes next to eyes
singed eyelash stubs
Marichka’s irises are dark brown
and so are her cheeks

they lie as if expired used up knocked out
murdered near their homes that’s all that’s left
teach me to avenge this fatigue
teach me how to take revenge
for this fatigue

phalanges next to phalanges
teeth next to teeth
eyes next to eyes
singed eyelash stubs
their pants covered with blood
are Peter’s

teach me how to remember something like this
a rushing tank went mushroom foraging
but the mushrooms proved to be poisonous
so now that tank’s nowhere to be found

phalanges next to phalanges
teeth next to teeth
eyes next to eyes
singed eyelash stubs
grasshoppers on the scabs
since someone here tried to cross over
and another tried to crawl over
in a word it’s all the rushings
you’re all just too rushing

wagtails are hopping on the shore
making manly noises
staring at the body parts
where an invading ivan was eliminated

don’t be silent teach me
how to turn language through memory
how with my memories to turn around my talk
how to mow gray hair splitting hair
awaken a gaze and carry the burden lightly
praying for grace for us

have mercy fill your heart with mercy
bounded by the heart’s limits

and let us explode with wrath
rewarding the enemy with death

* * *

i document
day one of evacuation
i cannot suppress the hunger of writing
because fasting orogeny war
are states signifying cornification

inducing reverence
in the boy who managed to eat
so much ice cream to knock down

so many trees to blow up
so many armored vehicles
it isn’t too late yet

according to the rules of allegory
on day two of the evacuation
my body stopped growing
but the heart still warm continues to throb and clang
the tea without sugar is cold
a siege of dry land by water

the sky has turned scabby seen from the window
on day three there is still sunlight somewhere
and the hail of Grad missiles is a sort of sowing machine
heat and frost resistant

today on day four
i wonder how it was to experience
the flashing tracer bullets
of wwii
where are their children and where shall we put them

maceration erosion of cells
day five fish and fowl i think
i’ll go to the marketplace and buy
it’s high time and timely

checking out in the mirror my white
teeth that i have written all over
both good and bad paper
my dumb gums are bleeding
i feel tired and on day six
redegeneration of transformation

the dog that walked on a mine and exploded
has transformed into a broken pinkie
and is hurting that’s all I can handle
that’s it the rest is belaboring
and gradual human dying inside oneself

the dog the man who blew himself up
while stretching, turned into pinky
and it hurts, I can’t do it anymore
all this repetition by heart and
all those people dying

overnight in one fell swoop
on day seven
as it was written

* * *

war instantly changes everything the rustles and murmurs
the leaves falling in may are intensely scarlet from the bullets
shot–through leaves faces hands rising in the throat
of the wartime woods

war obscures the sky and the birds in the sky
only ravaged dreams entrails hearts
are visible within birds
purple crows purple thrushes purple nightingales
the crescent moon has had its nostrils torn out
and now speaks in a hoarse voice
beats its head against ice and hides on the sea bottom
before it’s too late

as bloody while the sun feigns being blind and deaf
it does not chirp nor thud if it mute and disdains
photosynthesis
mindlessly groping around space
for antipersonnel mines smelling the anti–tank mycelium
and poisoned grass the war has altered the color green
this forest alone contains 7 to 10 tons of bee–devouring
landmines

so if you are alive you learn to exist among and between
you basically learn to shuttle between and find existence among
bounce repeatedly back and forth
it is not until such time that you long and pray for real

the wartime forest inside human sleep
remembers the big thing and this war’s a thorns
in the forest’s side

* * *

gravity emanating from black holes from bullets
defies the laws of planetary motion
distorting space

each bullet travels in all four
cardinal directions
within me

any bullet that is not mine
is mine as well
aiming at my head neck heart
breaking my spine
curtailing my body
the world’s body

a scarlet hole signifies
silence in the dance
in free fall

the mouth agape
a finger in the wound

visible in the air
is each of the molecules
and all of the last thought

as I think
to their face

* * *

he tells me
you live in an egg
fragile thin shell white on the inside
but colored like it’s from a chicken’s ass on the outside

he tells me
you sit on your verses like they’re eggs
straining yourself too long
like a bird of passage

he tells me
on the naked skin
how do you mean naked
well on the cheek
sudden tears
you had better watch the river
and your hands

he tells me
to be without a spine is like being without legs
and without a head

he tells me
if ever you stumble over a pit
hold on to your own misfortune for it never drowns

he tells me
glass in your pocket is worse than glass in your stomach

i tell him ejected from the nest
i tell him yes headless tailless but not spineless
i tell him such is life

i say he says
is a single flowering plant ivan–and–maria
yellow and blue inner voice

then he says to me
this too is a war

i say to him yes a war
i live in an egg
the shell fragile thin

* * *

the hair still alive still moving
the hairs could have died off by own but not like this
it’s best if they die together

wednesday in the middle of the road
in the middle of the train
in the middle of the year (and exactly six months of war)
wednesday from half of the calendar in the pocket
sucks the juices from all the trees and the trees
are twisted and bloody

the wind blows the hair dries up calms down
surrounding their native heat
still stroking the severed hand while it
stiffens blackens weeps

* * *

like a dog
time licks my hands

rivers of years flow seven times a sevenfold
whether their riverbeds be deep or shallow
some veins look like streaks
on frozen foliage

and if life is still ongoing
if time is still on a leash
it seems its shadow’s shadow on the wall
much larger than in real life
lies down on the ground and wags its tail tick tock tick tock
just like that
only to quickly melt away along with the snow

sleep is not painful per se
it’s just that time’s hot
terrible tender red tongue
licks my hands

as if licking wounds
down to the very ashes
the darkness the white bones

all in perpetuity

and the prepaid sim card
for this many days

means a few more days daily
an additional three minutes of conversation