SONNETS LEANING LEFT, RIGHT

by Olga Livshin

Left-Leaning Sonnet

                           For Maria Gapotchenko

What can we do   WHAT CAN WE DO   We

can hide in a sonnet   Its milky worn 

warmth  You look hot in a sonnet 

Like a baby elephant  Pull the taffeta   

over your eyes  Turn off the news  

How to help from under a word comforter  

Stick out one hand   Poke the nearest sufferer

Hey fellow victim   Hola      Pryvit     How’s it all

hanging   Do you need anything

I know about tragedies  Can I write one about you

Or sing you into the velvet car of my ghazal  

Sell all my books and Venmo you a little sum

I would send a sun      or my hardy son   but 

don’t know  what am I doing   What have I done

Right-Leaning Sonnet

I say you can’t see borders from space  just fat land slices

and blue elixir  He chuckles When did that ever matter 

I say  You make money from different parts of the world

He talks about the history of empire

and dictators cycling like water   I say  Nature 

flits like pixies       Burning Siberian peat

brought Anchorage  soot He says  Sad Not 

your fault Enjoy your short life   I say I am  

enjoying my friendships in Lviv and Kharkiv  and 

want hamsters and parakeets to live on  He replies 

Arrive  Thirty-four years late  Better than never   

Look    The whole planet on your well-chosen plate

Sweet and staring at us both with disbelief

Docile and looking up with brilliant hope

Olga Livshin’s poetry recently appears in Poetry, The Southern Review, and AGNI. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019) and translator of Today is a Different War by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). 

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.