The Bones of the Landscape

Translated by Sergey Gerasimov

A birch with a naked top.
A dotted beauty under a cloak of twigs.
The yellow leaves on the right side
are spread unevenly.
They don’t fall but flow down from the birch
in a single huge stained-glass drop
filled with the jelly from the pig’s head of the wind.
The drop hangs above a desperately red Mazda.
A cat lies in the sphinx position on the still-warm hood.
And higher, on a branch, there is a clear bag.
Having swallowed a lot of raindrops,
it dangles like a body of a hanged man with a swollen eye.
A dead pigeon in front of the garage is pressed into the asphalt,
embedded firmly in it, and only wind brushes the three feathers:
the zombie ikebana flinches, trying to fly, for old time’s sake.
The distant brood of building cranes
against the pale pink sunset
look like futuristic flamingoes that feast on anchovy in oil –
on people, walking home from the factory,
They make their way over the bridge,
in the undisturbed boredom of the slowly falling night.
The gnawed-bare bones of the landscape.

Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in The Nation, Rattle,The London Magazine, Another Chicago Magazine, Eurolitkrant, Poet Lore, NDQ, The Pinch, New Mexico Review, The Ilanot Review, National Translation Month, and others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest. His poems have been awarded the RHINO 2022 Translation Prize. He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.

Sergey Gerasimov is a Ukraine-based writer, poet, and translator of poetry. When not writing, he leads a simple life of teaching, playing tennis, and kayaking down beautiful Ukrainian rivers. The largest Russian book publishing companies have published him. His English-language stories and poems have appeared in Adbusters, Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, J Journal, The Bitter Oleander, and Acumen, among others. His most recent book is Oasis. He has translated poetry later nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

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