by Alex Galper
translated from Russian by the poet
with Igor Satanovsky and Mike Magazinnik
I live in Siberia
In the very heart of Southern Brooklyn.
In the mornings people are flocking to the taiga of Wall Street
Returning in the evening barely alive, frozen, stock-bitten,
Bleeding from computer-bug wounds.
Some disappear forever
Mauled to death by the bears of big corporations
Or buying houses in New Jersey.
In the spring I see their corpses
Inviting me to follow the same path
From the pages of respectable publications.
Alex Galper was born in Kiev, Ukraine and emigrated to America at the age of twenty. In 1996, he graduated from Brooklyn College majoring in Creative Writing. (His professor was Allan Ginsberg.) Alex Galper's poems have been published in many Russian magazines.