first sonnet to cinncinatus
a century since you responded i
think – the body woke me up at five
and time no longer grows up like a tree
but in all directions. i can see
a gull drop foot by foot like it was copy
pasted down the pillar-canvas, falling
right on my eyes. collision is delight
embodied, rerun bodies form a rhyme
already used, already used to long
silences . perhaps, this is
the winter i get too into Lacan
a little too into the phantom wind
outside, your voice’s medium. my phone
sticks to its habit, phantom buzzing in
direct proportion to my own desire.
despite the words, i am still a boy at school.
the seagull lives, the body plays it cool,
or tries, a stubborn child, in denial
(December 29, 2021)
pink diamond in the dark
i just want to write a pop song but
i just want to write a pop song but
i just i just want to want to want to
just i want to just a just a pop song a song to
have, but there is something wanting in
this remix as you lie atop my
arms. mechanical embraces tick
counting blinks until your breath hotly
shuddering will slip my ear. metaphor
breaks the mirror, leaving metonymy as
i sit, watch my player running bases
absent mind and in my beer, the glass
bridling the movement in this act
i wanted to write a sonnet but
i wanted to write a sonnet but
i wanted in
(September 20, 2021)
Venya Gushchin is a poet, literary translator, and PhD Candidate at Columbia University, writing a dissertation on the late styles of Russian modernist poets. The Blockade Swallow, selected poems by Olga Berggolts translated by Gushchin, appeared from Smokestack Books in 2022. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus; Action, Spectacle; Midway Journal, and elsewhere.