THREE POEMS from TATIANA ZIMA
for Alexander Dyomin

…the city of operatic winds and tickling words
when erring, it’s easy to grab by the throat, laughing
here, at the murky shore of the great language
it’s easier to choke on it than bread and water
so the land fattens on the poets
committed to it forever and ever
                                                    
…this is the lyricism of trashcans
of brutal things and feral roads
so I run and I run and I run and I run
I’m all of them, the arrow and the target and the sharpshooter
and I can’t run away
 
…so while I was learning hard to laugh, so serious
I unlearnt to cry, I don’t know what is worse
I’d like to swell with blood in the subjects of sorrow
I’d wish like hell to be the dust under its fingernails
the fall happens to poems, like it comes to the nature
just imagine, the hunter is avid for the dogs’ breath
and there’s nothing to clamp your teeth on
and there’s no one to kick my teeth out of my mouth
 
…a cat-or-kitty will slip by with some thievery in its mouth…
a sparrow will dart through the summer and out of my heart…
there’s a draft from all corners and nooks and it draws into void…
and the morning is bravely erected like a brick wall…
my city will suddenly leer with inimical verdure…
the crows and nuthatches and landrails will cackle like nightingales…

Lord have mercy on me, shoot me quick


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Tatiana Zima is a poet and kulturträger or "culture promoter". Born in 1968 in the port of Vanino, she currently lives in Vladivostok, a city in the Russian Far East. She has been extensively published by local and national literary magazines, and is the author of the award winning book Brackets (2004). She is also a publisher of the Vladivostok alternative poetry collection Fishes and Birds (2006).