Poems by Lyuba Yakimchuk

​DECOMPOSITION

nothing changes on the eastern front
well, I’ve had it up to here
at the moment of death, metal gets hot
and people get cold

don’t talk to me about Luhansk
it’s long since turned into hansk
Lu had been razed to the ground
to the crimson pavement

my friends are hostages
and I can’t reach them, I can’t do netsk
to pull them out of the basements
from under the rubble

yet here you are, writing poems
ideally slick poems
high-minded gilded poems
beautiful as embroidery

there’s no poetry about war
just decomposition
only letters remain
and they all make a single sound — rrr

Pervomaisk has been split into pervo and maisk
into particles in primeval flux
war is over once again
yet peace has not come

and where’s my deb, alts, evo?
no poet will be born there again
no human being

I stare into the horizon
it has narrowed into a triangle
sunflowers dip their heads in the field
black and dried out, like me
I have gotten so very old
no longer Lyuba
just a -ba


Translated from Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky
 
 

SUCH PEOPLE ARE CALLED NAKED
 
for Henri Michaux
 
 
you took off your t-shirt
i pulled off my dress
you unbuckled your belt
i unhooked my brassiere
you let down your pants and kicked off your socks
i freed myself out of my panties, so sassy
that it’s better to call them sassies
and now we lie in bed
two strips
like two white bread loaves
facing each other
you touch my cheek with your hand
you lower your hand on my neck
you drive your fingers along my clavicle:
-how nicely everything is made here! – you utter
but suddenly
from behind your shoulder your mom peeks and says,
-Andryusha, did you wash your hands?
you turn to face her, show your hands
she offers you fruit compote and goes to the kitchen
you turn back to me
put your hand back where you stopped
from the clavicle it slides down to my breasts
softly as sea sand
and then I feel my dad’s breath on my nape:
-think with your head, baby,
he whispers loudly
i turn away from you
and see his unshaved face quite close
and reply that i always think with my head!
i turn to you
and already my hand slides along your chest
and its thin hair bends under it
and then
behind your back the bed creaks:
-Andryusha, have some fruit compote
you turn away from me
kiss her sonorously and say:
mom, i want to be alone for a bit!
and she replies, offended:
it doesn’t look like you’re alone!
and she goes somewhere again
and now you are with me again
and your hand on my stomach
glides slowly down
so it gets so close and so tender
so it gets so
and then
i hear my grandmother’s croaking
she says loudly into my back:
you’re not a pure girl anymore –
see how your glance changed!
and i take your hand away from my belly
turn halfway to my granny
with the same hand of yours
i straighten her purple kerchief
and say loudly:
i’m still untouched, gran,
and will remain untouched forever!
i turn back to you
and here, over your shoulder
an old lady in a yellow kerchief peeps
this time, your granny:
what female name finishes with a consonant,
as if it was a man’s? – she asks
the answer is my name but i’m silent
and i take your hands away from my hips
snow falls between us
and like two toy soldiers
we lie like this till morning
and in the morning a cleaning lady comes
throws away the snow mounds between us
and i look into your green eyes for a long, long time
and you look at my brown nipples very long
then i say:
let’s get undressed.
and I take off, one by one:
my dad
my granny
my mom
my sister
and you take off, one by one:
your mom
your brother
your childhood friend
your pick-up trainer
and we now wear nothing at all
such people are called naked
 
 
 
Translated from the Ukrainian by Svetlana Lavochkina
 

NOTE
 
“Decomposition” first appeared in Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute/Academic Studies Press, 2017) and will be featured in Lyuba's forthcoming book of poetry in English translation Apricots of Donbas (Lost Horse Press, 2021).
 
“Such people are called naked” first appeared in The White Chalk Of Days: The contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series Antology (Academic Studies Pres, 2017) and will be featured in Lyuba’s forthcoming book of poetry in the English translation Apricots of Donbas (Lost Horse Press, 2021). 

​Lyuba Yakimchuk was born in Pervomaisk near Luhansk, the Ukraine, in 1985. She studied literature at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and later worked as a journalist. She has authored two collections of poetry, MODA (2009), which was awarded the Vassily Simonenko Prize, and Apricots of Donbas (2015). She is also the recipient of the International Slavic Award for Poetry (2013). Her book in English is forthcoming this year by Lost Horse Press. She lives in Kiev.

---

---