I wake up. Russia will invade soon. I eat my breakfast. Russia will invade soon. I go shopping. Russia will invade soon. I buy buckwheat and chocolate. Russia will invade soon. I take a bus to work. Russia will invade...
Water Talks
VIRUS AND STREAM It was August. The stream ran low but was busy with creatures seeking to cool off. One day a little human stood on the bank, and sneezed, and a virus entered the stream. Stream said, Are you singing...
Ukraine Poems by Rachel Sahaidachny
Refuge for the Displaced Persons —for Ivan & Anastasia Sahaidachny and family 1. The rain tastes charred. My mother calls it ruin rain it leaves streaks of ash on our skin. Somewhere a home is burning, once...
Lettuce All
_____ Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection, Hunger...
A BRIEF HISTORY OF KYIV
Yaruslav the Wise holds the city in his hands. Its domes and alleys constructed themselves in a dream of how best to manage the hill above the Dnipro. He has a Tatar face, fur-trimmed hat, robes of an idealized medieval...
Dear V: Two Poems by Margo Berdeshevsky
The Letter that Could Not Be Sent Dear V: Listen: I would have thought, it being winter right now, that drinking Borscht is better for keeping the soul warm than drinking Kool Aid, but what do I know. I’m just a...
In Fragments
I. Freshman year of college, your professor in ‘Reclaiming Human Rights for Communities of Color’ tells you she teaches her daughter consent through the most basic forms of contact. If someone asks for a hug, she makes...
Three Poems by Jeneva Burroughs Stone
White Armada pale winter sun glints off raised metallic plastic letters ARMADA on the broad rear of a meticulously white SUV—this whale of a vehicle (already mixed metaphors) has just pulled from a side street...
An Interview with Lan Samantha Chang
Lan Samantha Chang’s The Family Chao, released this February by W.W. Norton, on the surface, is a story about a Chinese immigrant family and the death of its patriarch. It is also a portrait of America, its many...
I am an elevator
attached to a brutalist construction— I see city blocks that fall asleep amid prickly weeds I see a skein of geese that land on the surface of the lake like it’s their job to surprise on demand _____...
WE FOLLOWED THE AMERICAN FLEEING, FLED
The ash sift settling on our cars and lawn furniture, the towering gray cumulus clouds, the smoke everywhere searing our eyes, throats, burning lungs, choking the shrouded streets, the way the cremated fumes seeped...