Andriy writes that to Mariupoltsi
corpses smell ptomainic… but I
wonder if we should render it as
the more familiar rotten for Westerners?
That gets shot down…
We shouldn’t have to reduce our experience
to 10,000 Easiest English Words!
Corpses smell rotten ptomainic.

In 2021 they said,
I come from Mariupol.
In 2023, it’s
After Mariupol.
Imagine it,
a shift in your being
from I live
to I did not die. No,
it can’t be translated
from body to sound…

Comments pop up in the Google Doc:
– Thanks, I like how it reads in English. –
– :  ) Не за что. That’s what I’m here for))) –
I translate for friends.
Humans whose souls I thought
contiguous with mine
until they became
The Ukrainians.
What’s техническая вода
‘technical’ water? Oh, ‘non-potable’.

I scope the original text,
slice an incision,
prise apart ribs,
grasp the meaning and
the shock the shock the shock
drubs through me,
second-hand screams
jam my throat
atrocity tears at synapse
until I cram it, seeping blood
into a rational package of English.

Her husband’s corpse
in the shrapnelled living room
is too heavy to lift so Inna stays
and I go.
Listen
to Daryna. Listen
to Alyona. Listen
to Artyem. Listen
to throats crushed
under rubble.
I can’t
reach so deep.
Some trace just got inside me
like sand in a laptop.

I never went to Mariupol…
I curl in my chair, my mind
crouching on Mariupol beach
playing idiom with shells
as the dustmeat city
crumbles at my back.
As dawn rises, I
release the screams:
white phosphorus gulls
over the Azov Sea.

 

*
From Magma 92, Ownership

 

Buy this issue for £8.50 in UK (including P&P) »Buy Now