Two Poems
The Organization likes / to hit them where they’re sleeping
If it was too cold you called on Satan.
Satan also had pre-rolled cigarettes;
no one had tobacco in Europe yet
for like 400 years, but Satan did
October 2, 2020
These people didn’t know my father
one of them said / you girls are always hauling heavy stuff
it’s possible all women make up a secret organization working under the guise of an oppressed class
the women coerced into prostitution they’re the suicide bombers of our terrorist organization
sacrificing themselves for the life of all women and the murder of all
men
a nice romantic image is coming together here
I think I’m one of these women
one of the ones engaged in the struggle against all men for all women
but I know it’s not true
AIDS exists but the struggle doesn’t
July 31, 2020
My Vagina
the state, my parents, gynecologists, strange men
May 1, 2017
Is Poetry Possible After the Victory of Trump?
what if after the victory of Trump / poetry’s days really are numbered?
but as dinner approaches the question again torments me / what good is poetry with the warhead of world war III / poking me in the back of the head
May 1, 2017
That Week Everything Suddenly Became Somehow Off-topic
Three poems by Pavel Arsenev
Usually it tells you a lot about your day-to-day activities, / When, at such a moment of mass enthusiasm, you find it difficult to move, / And you cannot “calmly continue to go about business as usual.”
February 3, 2017
January 20th—Day of Patriotic Devotion
There’s not so much space from here to there
The fingers that smell of cooking oil, of shit, of industrial cleaners / The fingers stained by the clichés of daily life
Life is hard, death is distant. Let’s multiply this by two and make it simpler.
The "Afghan" Market: Kuzminki
you break off a piece of delicious biscotti / yeah. that would be a lot more realistic / after all you’re so interested in realism
Four Poems
“Your second mouth is celestially gentle.” / I say nothing. I’m Angela Merkel.
The Language of Violence
I see students, fire / /people marching, fire / trembling, feeling, blind / invincible and kind, fire
Untitled
He’s still on top: / spinning out his dialectic / pillorying the fascists / demanding that his books also be burned on the square
Brecht, 1933
Introduction
Poetry after Brodsky
What these poets have in common is a desire to address contemporary Russian realities, and to occupy, through the medium of poetry, a position that has been both the glory and the curse of Russian poetry for the past two hundred years. That is, to be something more than poets.
