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Northern Features
of the Text
the snow breaks a white hammer
against the
window
which was appointed to be
the square head of a nail
you
know
not a single carpenter
will write
about it that way — of the two,
only the one that was more transparent went
unscathed
Pink Immortality
my older friend five-year-old
Pavlik
taught me to stomp on worms in the rain
for not having
faces
though sometimes it seemed that they had them —
baby
faces
these were rare and they were released
they were real
lucky
i think they’re still living
those pink
almost-people
Vivaldi at the Dead Racecourse
at the
beginning the times of year seem no different
and then comes winter
to
warm up
you get into the ripped-open belly of a dead horse
between
the loops of the intestines
a sticky non-lollipop summer sets
in
Biological Suburban Moscow Striptease
the young snake
gets ready to shed its skin for the first time shameful degrading difficult to
understand for what they say sometimes its necessary its so nice all watch mouth
full of saliva of poison now she’s about to jerk the snap open no can’t make
herself do it her clothes will be ripped off by force she’ll shrink even
skinnier and crawl away into her little burrow she won’t die there give birth to
something disgusting the kind that in these cases are born to those like
us
A Match From the Girl Factory
(A Poor Imitation of a
Film by Kaurismäki)
she wants to burn up for good so that her
hair would stop being gross white not at all finnish so that as the russian
write in their books “the eyelashes fell and were subtly warmed by moist spoons
in tasty boiled eyes” so that artificial breathing would be performed on her in
vain by a good-looking doctor everything will end differently in the body of the
match the poisoned fibers will be dislocated by the damp wooden
rain
Future Weddings, This is You
narrow silver
ring
resembles a pencil-gray circle
around an ad in the personals
where
someone’s fingers are
always squeamishly searching
in another the white
muscles of a bride
An Illegal Death in the Lilliputian Theatre
the old stagehand
the only one in the troupe of regular
height
dies amongst the scenery after the curtain falls
snow white and
the seven dwarves
cry as if
they’re afraid to ask the question
"in our
little hell will this big man feel as much pain for as
long?"
Motherhood Sans Dreams
the bird-woman
the one
that lives
in the house of hanging clocks
broke, wheezes without end
i
want children, i want chicks, i won’t give them up, i’m good, i’m
an unreal
coo-coo
Rodchenko. Smell of Sulphur
…
a man jumps off
the horizontal bars
his hands are bent
already turning away from the
photograph
you realize
no, they’re not bent
they’re cut off at the
elbow
by the human scissors of the inwardly-perspiring
komsomol*
…
the fire ladder lifts to the sky
into
autumn
into the gray belly
where one can feel the fruit with your
hands
it doesn’t want to come here a second time
…
road
work
They say “Eat dirt! Eat dirt!” to the excavator, the fat non-living
little girl. Fat ones aren’t liked, they are laughed at cruelly. She buries
herself even deeper to slim down, into the underground aerobics of sullied
lard.
…
Lilya Brik screaming something
venereal
magnificence
acquires the right to ceaseless movement in
spurts
…
the dilated pupils of a pioneer girl
she dreams of
growing up
and becoming a zoo technician
she doesn’t know that there
she’ll see an amphibian
beginning its transformation back into a fish
into
a red scaly sweet necktie
that was tied for her in the night
by the
handsome group leader Seryozha Rybakov*
… .
the kremlin.
first-of-may parade.
the red tibetan ceremony
of exorcising evil
spirits
from the disposable mausoleum
the annual moscow seizure
of
monotheism losing consciousness
Trans. Matvei Yankelevich
Translation(s) originally commissioned by CEC Artslink on the occasion of the author’s visit to the US as a participant in their Open World program.
Andrei Sen-Senkov is a Tajikistan born poet living in Moscow where he works primarily as a doctor. He holds a degree in medicine from Yaroslavl State Medical Academy. Sen-Senkov is the author of six books of poetry and prose, including Dancing with a Taller Woman, and The Small Hole Resistance. In 1998 he won the Turgenev Festival Prize for short prose. His poetry has been short-listed for the Andrey Bely Prize and Moskovsky Schet Prize. He has published in many journals including Jacket, and was anthologized in Crossing Centuries (Talisman House 2000).