Cover art: Anton Tarasiuk “High voltage” 2021, courtesy of Ukrainian painters’ exhibit in Padua
as mother as daughter
part 1. as daughter
clock hand goes in the same direction as the wooden spoon stirring porridge in a saucepan
eventually both of them stop to hit me with all the regrets they have
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my bruises have faded by now as well as 1999 Easter photo
on the front page of the local newspaper
though my mother still keeps it on a kitchen shelf
the pain on my face caused by two tight braids
was captured multiplied and delivered to 15000 mailboxes around the city
if you look closely you can see I am wearing self-made jewelry
that is the only thing my mother regrets about that photo
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I was always so crafty you know
suppressing my traumas into some beautiful pieces
like poems or short stories or beads for my neckless
weaving and sewing and putting my own life together
but in a tolerable way
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near the big purple bead that I got for telling my mother I hate her
near a couple of beads that I got for being just like my father
near dozens of similar wooden beads
//because in this family we don’t talk at the table
near hundreds of beads
each meant to teach me a lesson
//what was the lesson tell me what was the lesson
near countless number of beads that are torn combs of my long nasty hair
there is plenty of space
part 2. as mother
Clock hand strikes 6 a.m. that is the time to wake up
6:30 – I wake up my daughter
At 7 I feed my daughter
At 7:05 I hit my daughter
At 7:15 I braid my daughter
At 7:30 I kiss her goodbye when she goes to school
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At home we say it is not me that is hitting you
It is my hand
It is a wooden spoon
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I still cover my forehead with left hand when I eat
My left ear hides two tiny scars left by sharp nails of my mother
Though my back shows no traces of the buckle of an old army belt
Acquired kyphoscoliosis doesn’t let me forget they’ve existed
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I go to work at 8
It is not me who hits her it is my grandmother
It is not me who yells at her it is my mother
It is me who works on the weekends to pay for her school
It is me who takes extra shifts to have a nice vacation on summer
It is me who buys her all of her pretty clothes and shoes
Work till 7
Wearing the gemstones of my wounds all day long
With pride
Like our family heirloom
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When I get home it is time
– to feed my child
– hit my child
– read her a bedtime story
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Clock hand strikes midnight
I put myself to sleep
Thinking of the bills I still have to pay and
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Loving my daughter
midsummer landscape
1.
dry air leaves bitterness on the surface of my lungs
2.
the bitterness travels by arteries and capillaries to every cell of my body
3.
every cell of my body stores the scent of the burnt wood
4.
the sound of stomping hooves approaches
the scream of every creature that is capable of screaming approaches
collective animal fear approaches
rapidly
a head of a dead deer passes by
a tail of a red cardinal passes by
a collective body of fear covered in feathers and wool passes by
undistinguishable
irreversible
5.
the burnt wood smells like me
sounds like me
tastes like me
feels like me
has the form of me
comes from distant territories like me
in fact here we stand together as one in the hot dry air observing grass and bushes
and trees turn black
gradually
6.
damp stones under my feet
dried out
7.
a flock of cardinals
meltedin the scarlet sky
8.
my hair weaved into the rusty grass at the bank of Connecticut river
9.
on September 28, 2022 in Uppsala, Sweden
a poet from Belarus Kristina Bandurina asking
if I will be able to write poems of something besides the war once the war is over
I replied sure
I replied look at parts 1-5 of this poem
I replied
Yes?
Kristina smiled
I am planting her smile into a wounded soil at the bank of Connecticut river
to resist
to resist
I hope
moonless night over Appalachian Trail
1.
tiny hawk arrives at Thundering Falls
scratchy trees stop grieving their bloom
when I start thinking of war
2.
a moment ago I got a call from home
‘bomb shellings at night look blossoming’
said my mother
3.
adamant sky swallows
anxious thoughts provoked by my mother’s call — withered leaves — flying hawk
and gets even darker
Meeting Mariya
plastic bottles flank surface of timeless river. its banks – dumps of empty cans torn clothes and sunbathing people. I hide in the shadow of sign ||||||| SAWAGED ||||||| CONTAMINATED WATER ||||||| the landscape seems almost idyllic till I put on nearsighted glasses
my infant grandmother Mariya comes out of the river wipes herself dry and curls under a ragged blanket beside me. I am old. my hair has already turned from grey and white to completely white. my infant grandmother shares her drinking water and a slice of bread with me. this is how we survive.
she says something but I am not wearing my hearing aid. her voice sounds like mumbling of war long forgotten and never recalled
another place where we often meet is a coach of the refugee train in the borderland. Mariya is twenty by then. I am twenty eight. she stands in a box-wagon at the frontier between Russia and Kazakhstan in November 1941. I sit in a commuter carriage at the frontier between Ukraine and Poland in March 2022. we are cold. more scared of our future than our past even though our past was atrocious. young grandma asks if I ate well. I lie. asks if I feel well. I lie. asks if I slept well. I say no. the train continues its movement. we arrive at the towns we’ve never been before. all we brought in the pockets of our long black coats is identity cards and hopes. this is how we survive.
we leave the train without saying goodbyes
I have to say Mariya and I lived together when I was a child. I watched her hair turning from grey and white to completely white. I rarely talked to her – as each year it required more screaming. she never fully recovered after the second stroke and was half-paralyzed. she talked like a person who lives in the past. she yelled if I had thrown away bread crunches left on the table.
she told me some stories of her life and made me repeat them checking if I have remembered them well. once she made me do that a couple of times in a row louder and louder and said: ‘what a nice story you tell. whose is it?’ I replied: ‘yours’.
‘oh, but it’s not mine’.
and in two month
she died.
peace, n.
Pronunciation: /ˈtriː.t̬i/
General use:
1.
children of army depots schooled at bomb shelters
misspelling word ‘peace’
in essays about their dreams
therefore I have to make ‘piece’ into ‘peace’ at least once a month for almost a decase
2.
year by year
they have almost forgotten what it was and had to look for the meaning of the word in
month by months
they have almost forgotten what it was and had to look for the meaning of the word in
day by day
they have almost forgotten what it was and had to look for the meaning of the word in
every minute every second of war
they have almost forgotten what it was and had to look for the meaning of the word in
seems endless
they have almost forgotten what it was and had to look for the meaning of the word in
makes peace less and less plausible
they have almost forgotten what it was and had to look for the meaning of the word in
3.
there are two main questions regarding peace
teachers of humanities have to struggle with
in military depots
question 1: how to protect children who have never seen peace
from an outdated concept they have learnt from books
once the treaty is signed
question 2: how to protect our own memories of peace
from the retouch of despair
4.
when the peace was announced
I could almost appreciate nice spring weather flowery dress and heels on my way to school
but I could feel sharp fragments of war
where the clothes was touching my skin
till the last of my days
one of the adjectives used in the description of the Hydrogen Bomb is ‘sophisticated’
elegant steel surface
and the content of it
is the end of the world
like the content of an empty shell
is an ocean
if you could put it to your ear
what would you hear?
Daryna Gladun is a Ukrainian poet, performance artist and translator, born 1993. She lived in Bucha until the beginning of March. When she realized that the Russian troops were not only bombing the airport but were also aiming to take over the city, she packed her backpack and left by whatever route was possible.Since then she has continued writing in various academic venues in Europe and the U.S. that have provided support. She is one of nearly five million Ukrainians who have left their home country.
