2023
When a war flares abroad,
American sky smooths out, erasing
the small scars left behind by airplanes: we
are now extra soft, extra large.
American oxygen, twinkling: Little accomplices,
you luxuriate under my protection.
The sky has gentled my head
so many times, I have nearly learned
to check my disgust, not the news.
This year,
two wars pierce us.
Our American hands: fingers in each.
Wherever I look,
loved ones writhe – here –
from distant contusions.
American heaven
weighs down our necks
like a venomous gem.
Olga Livshin’s work appears in the New York Times, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, and other journals. She is the author of the poetry collection A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (2019). She co-translated Today is a Different War by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and A Man Only Needs a Room by the Russian Jewish immigrant poet Vladimir Gandelsman (New Meridian Arts, 2022). As a consulting poetry editor for Mukoli: A Journal for Peace, she reviews poetry from conflict-affected communities across the world. (Photo courtesy of Shalimar Varvoutis)
