UKRAINE HAIKU

by G. R. Kramer

On May 20, Dmytro Kozatskyi, a soldier of the #Azov Regiment posted his photos of the defenders of #Mariupol, calling on the world media and those who can help to distribute them. "Well, that's all. Thank you for the shelter; Azovstal is the place of my death and life. See you".

all across the road

blood of butchered                  root in cracks

seed of black spring             bloom

 

weapon

 

below white flowers

we lie with the fray of bees

nowhere people are

 

child

 

mir meant peace to both

when trees leafed over laughter

now           stumps             stand    their     ground

 

      explosive

 

see how the flies help

keep down             the odor of rot

old men in ditches

 

witness

 

may the good endure

tanks missiles sunflowers plows

may the lost                    return

 

annihilate

 

family        stained             red

parlor tatters                      open sky

empty sniper eyes

 

artillery

 

war machines rust out

wind blown blood loam covers steppe

lily bulbs open

 

memory

 

when do nations live

empires feed         death to their dead

human history

 

for get       ting

 

mothers of soldiers

whose blood drains to the black sea

mothers of soldiers

 

G. R. Kramer grew up in Canada, Kenya and the U.S., the child of refugees from fascism and communism. A lawyer by vocation, his passion for writing poetry has rekindled in late middle-age. His first poetry chapbook is forthcoming from Finish Line Press and he has published in numerous journals. 

ANTIGONE IN MARIUPOL

by Bonnie Naradzay

Mariupol, Ukraine 17 April 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

I searched the ruined city for my brother

to consecrate him with a proper burial.

Snow was still falling in the cold spring then.

I stopped at a body pockmarked with bullets;

the fingers on each hand had been bent backwards.

I came upon a corpse without a head. 

Do I know him?  Oh, they are all my brothers,  

in mass graves everywhere, shoved into ditches, 

dead in the midst of life from this unholy invasion.

Now I myself am buried—in tunnels below the city,   

refusing to surrender to the enemy king who said

not even a fly will be allowed to leave alive.  

Sentries are everywhere, barricading the doors. 

Where oh where is the civilized world?

Some day, perhaps, Sophocles will create a tragedy

for people to witness—and make sense of this.

Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry salons at a day shelter for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. Poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review online, Tampa Review, Florida Review online, EPOCH, The American Journal of Poetry, and others. While in graduate school, she took a class that Robert Lowell taught: “The King James Bible as English Poetry.” In 2010 she was awarded the New Orleans MFA poetry prize: a month’s stay with Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary in her castle in Northern Italy. While there, she had tea with Mary, heard cuckoos calling during mating season, and hiked in the Dolomites.