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[Poetry] Two Poems by Tatiana Retivov

Updated: Sep 20

3 May 2022 On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

 


It will go

To the wrong

Town. And

            Others

            insulated

Their windows.

Questioning and

Examining stragglers.

 

They didn’t.

            You sleep

            On an old chest.

The unbleached

Planks of the room.

            The second snapshot

            Was of a woman

            And a little boy.

 

His mother who

Seemed to be

Explaining something

                                    to him.

People asked to be

Taken along with them.

Between four and five

In the morning. But

 

Today even the last

Few. And in this rain.

The bread which was

Brought. Would say

Without envy.

“Well then,” he says,

“I’ll give you

One question”…

 

 

 

untitled


We don't celebrate birthdays

or go to each other's funerals anymore.

Ever since the sun

 

dropped out of the sky.

Beware of self-

fulfilling prophecies,

 

You have said.

I hear you!

But the trajectory

 

of my life

has shifted

intercontinentally.

 

Are you even alive?

Nestled in a borderline

village hut on the Dniepr...

 

Fishing for whatever

the river brings as it hugs

 its God forsaken shores.

 

Meanwhile I wear

my survivor's guilt like a heart

on a sleeve, misquoting

 

Adorno as I disengage

myself from the vicissitudes

of being torn asunder.

 

 

Tatiana Retivov received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Montana and an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan. She has lived in Kyiv, Ukraine since 1994, where she runs an Art & Literature Salon and a small publishing press, that publishes prose, poetry, and non-fiction in Ukraine.




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