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This piece is about 8 printed pages long. It is copyright © Valery Nugatov and Peter Golub and Jacket magazine 2008. See our [»»] Copyright notice. The Internet address of this page is http://jacketmagazine.com/36/rus-nugatov.shtml

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Valery Nugatov

Tr. Peter Golub

Plans

He said to her
Everything will be fine
Everything will turn out
Everything will happen for us
Don’t worry
The world is our oyster
Please, don’t cry
Don’t worry
We’ll have money
Buy a place
A nice mortgage
I’ll find a good job
With a good salary
We’ll start saving
Until we have a respectable sum
And then we’ll leave
Far far away
Where it’s good
Where it’s sunny and warm
Send all these bastards to hell
Driving, flying, riding away
Leaving behind no information about our whereabouts
Toss the cellphone out the window
Not warning anyone
Telling no one good-bye
Not even a txt or a voice message
We’ll disappear
No joke
In a week they’ll begin to wonder
Start calling our friends
Ask each other at parties
Didn’t see them? No.
They didn’t call? No.
Didn’t write? No.
Strange...
And then they’ll change topic
And in a month or so forget
Once in a while someone will mention us
But these times will grow fewer
Fewer
Fewer
And finally nothing
And we’ll be happy together
Somewhere far far away
He said these things to her
As his tears fell
Onto the table, the floor, the windows, walls, mirror, sink, door, ceiling, books, monitor, Keyboard, shoes, cloths, gloves, bed, tv, chair, closet, coathanger, stool, toilet, faucet,
Printout, shelf, the knife
Fist tightly clenching
His rubbery
Slippery
Crimson
Covered in warm blood
Torn out with meat
Balls


Everything in Due Time

First off educate yourself
Gain experience
Look around
Acquire manners
Grow professionally
Mature intellectually
Don’t neglect your health
Keep in good shape
Keep your speech eloquent
Don’t use too much vulgarity and slang
Learn to master pronunciation
Know where to put the stress
Learn languages
Be social
Be creative
Be cool under stress
Work after hours
Your best face forward
Become the pride of your company or department
And everything will work out
Everything in due time
For now just know to be patient

And suck my cock
Suck bitch
Suck pig
Suck whore
With more energy
More
Deeper
Stronger
Suck I said
Like that
Good
Now continue like that
Yes
More
Don’t stop
Faster
Even Faster
Like that

And now swallow
Swallow bitch
All of it to the last drop
And imagine it’s your paycheck, swallowing a prominent job, swallowing your modern Apartment with chic furniture, swallowing your expensive car, swallowing your rich Husband, swallowing your well to do happy family, swallowing your country house, Swallowing your vacation on the Riviera, swallowing your inexhaustible lover, swallowing Your lifting and Botox, swallowing your clothes from leading designers, swallowing your ivy League education, swallowing the sweetness of life, swallowing your beautiful poignant Funeral, swallowing Moscow and Paris, swallowing the stars, swallowing rubies, swallowing Diamonds, swallowing all the gold of the world


2 by 2

I haven’t been able to get any peace
The following combination
Haunts me wherever I go:
A tan glamorous cock
Penetrating a shaved fabulous cunt
When people rock in the full subway car
Or think about where they can get some more money
Before my eyes
Is this picture:
A large cock with a full indigo vein
Like a piston slams into a wet glistening cunt
My eyes run over the evenings waving advertisements
I tilt my head to the turbid autumn sky
I cut with a dull knife a piece of bloody meat
Brought by the nervous waiter
And everywhere it appears
This silent floundering tandem
From different angles
And various positions
Cock to the left cunt to the right
Or diagonally
Or visa versa
From the second of penetration
Or in the full animal heat of it
Or the point of climax
This coitus is continuous uninterrupted
Never ending
Even when I run across the street
In front of a full speeding Mercedes
Even when I finish off the last sip of wine
These two don’t leave me for a second
Sometimes in slow motion
Or fast forward
But never reaching the end
I always concentrate
Try to speak briefly and to the point
I don’t like to justify people’s expectations
I can’t stand it when people inform me of their special rights
It’s funny
They’re rather sad
I like to watch my monotonous dull kino
The writer is always predictable
The director has maximally exploited the variety of this minimal palette
The actors are above praise
For the casting is done by your unruly servant

Cock and cunt
The fabulous cock and cunt
Across the entire screen of my watering eyes
To the depth of my cooled heart
And my dying kidneys
To the full silence of my overheated brain
And throbbing balls
For the whole kind kind kind
Shining world


Eating Books

                                        for Danila Davydov

We’re only thirty
But are already plagued by spiritual hunger
Our spiritual stomachs turn
With a sinking in the spiritual pit of the stomach
An insatiable desire to eat books

With paycheck
With honorarium
With money from somewhere
We rush madly to the places of mass book distribution
We can buy whole stacks at the bookstore
Choose them according to taste
Then find a comfortable spot
And greedily eat them all
Spitting as we walk out: bones, skin, thread, cloth
And other inedible ingredients

When animal hunger descends
Why not go to a book restaurant
Get a full order
And there and then swallow them all
Drowning them in syrup and reviews
So as not to accidentally choke

Like all good food
Books must be fresh
Fresh books are the best
Delectable and better for digestion
Old books are dry and tough to chew
Hard to swallow
The chances of choking on an old book are higher
Although they are cheaper
(Of course there are archeologists
The lovers of expensive eccentricities
But they don’t count)

The gourmands exchange opinions
This publisher’s books are piquant, hot, and spicy
One should really eat them raw
Although they have a short shelf life
And should be consumed early, before spoiling
These books are bland, dry, and light
You can eat them by the dozen
Even if you suffer from spiritual gastritis
Or a spiritual stomach ulcer
They don’t cause indigestion
Although the mouth cavity’s spiritual receptors atrophy
The sense of taste goes dull

There is a new arrival promised, high calorie
Not to be missed
He is best when eaten by a first reader
Before he goes stale
Bland
Or God forbid rotten
Otherwise you run the risk of being poisoned
We must be solicitous when it comes to our spiritual health

For our spiritual diet
Is directly linked to our spiritual stool
After eating all those books
We expel them
Secretly hoping
There will be heterotrophs enough
For even these processed viands

Obviously
The market is large
Tastes diversify
But detritivores will always be found
To break everything down

There are more books with every year
With every year there is more aliment
And as always we’ll try and eat it all
(Of course the fresher the better
In order to avoid torsion of the spiritual bowels.)

Valery Nugatov. Photo by Foxxxy.

Valery Nugatov (b. 1972, Poltava Ukraine) is a writer, translator, performance artist, and peaceful iconoclast. His poetry and prose have appeared in many journals. He has published two books of poetry, including Freelance (2006). He was short-listed for the Moskovsky Schet Prize (2007). He has translated the works of Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Queneau, W.B. Yeates, Georges Bataille, other writers.