I want by Mykyta Ryzhykh

 

Alan Cabello

I want 

I want to be a killer sleeping on crumpled grass

I want to be buried in crumpled grass

I want to kill

I want to be

Buried under the grass is a home for worms and insects

The buried has no room for error

I want to kill the war

I want to be home

Reprint from The Gravity of the Thing

© Mykyta Ryzhykh

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Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh, an author from Ukraine, now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, and many others.

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Who it was by Mykyta Ryzhykh

Birmingham Museums Trust

Who it was 

 

To be honest I don't know who it was. He just came out and said that he would live with us in the kitchen now. A small piece of a man inside a stone. We decided not to argue and a small piece of a man inside a stone settled in our house. Over time he needed more space to live so we moved to the basement (we imagined that it was a bomb shelter, and not a basement where we could be buried to death by rubble). The khaki-colored sea was burning with the sun, but we know that the sun doesn't care who it shines for, and the side and the gun don't care either about blood or sperm. An endless sea. Such a space. If you repeat the same actions every day, time will not stop. Even if you die, time will not stop. The parents got tired of sitting in the basement and went outside, into death and old age. Old age smells like a burden, like childhood. The parents looked around: there were animal corpses and soldiers' guts lying around. I feel most sorry for animals because it is not their fault that they live on a human planet and are not capable of thinking so deeply that they can fall into the abyss. My parents went outside and disappeared like pigeons in a minefield of life (plants and flowers grow on the earth, but the bones of the violently killed lie underground). The light bulb in my personal basement was constantly blinking, and I was stealing money from my health and talent to pay for artificial light. A friend of mine had a grandmother who was fed condensed milk from the Third Reich by Wehrmacht soldiers during the occupation. My grandmother was not fed condensed milk at all for the first five years of her life, these years just happened to fall on the post-war hungry years. I am increasingly showing signs of diabetes, perhaps I ate too much condensed milk as a child. And the flowers without graves continued to grow. And the graves without flowers continued to grow. Graves without names: just remains dumped in a pile (this is called, according to Soviet tradition, the "tomb of the unknown soldier"). Another friend of mine didn't have a grandmother (how his mother was born remains a mystery). It's very difficult to change light bulbs in the dark. My personal basement was damp and bones were growing stickily under my bed (at night the same bones were burning in the red prison sky). My grandmother, or as call her babushka, will never see this again. My grandmother didn't see much, for example, the northern lights or the southern Italian embankment. My friend's grandmother only saw endless concentration camps and the rails on which prisoners were transported from a German concentration camp. And straight to a Soviet concentration camp (it's something like an Indian ghetto or slave labor in Africa, only without any connection to nationality). Sooner or later they will kill everyone: even themselves. Sometimes I let the cat out of the basement: it reflexively hunted mice, then played with the corpse for a long time, then gnawed. I could regularly see mouse remains at the entrance to the basement. And my cat often vomited (usually grass). I too often feel a sense of emptiness at the frozen snowy silence from what I have seen. My cat doesn't see anything and doesn't even know what war is.  And I don't tell him about it anyway: what if he starts protecting our house from the blast wave and dies? It’s funny, I still haven’t figured out the gender of my cat, but by default I think he’s a boy. Actually, this isn't even my cat and I don't understand how we ended up on the same ark together. When I first saw him, he was clean and skinny, like a Jew who found himself in the gas chamber of Auschwitz or a Polish prisoner about to be shot by the NKVD. This all reminds me of a sad fact: someday my cat will die without ever knowing that a war has broken out. What’s more, my cat will never know why the war started. I will probably die, too, without ever finding out why people go to war. I want to die without finding out that there is a war. my basement was gradually filling with the water of time, and I couldn't swim like a statue of a dead man. Something was bursting in my eardrums of memory. Sometimes the crow king would visit me like a picture and peck at my hair. Someone coughed blood into my eyes. Somewhere in the basement the pipes of tired lungs hummed. Some god soared up and did not kiss me like Hyacinth (I probably won't come back). Some day I looked into the mirror of my own world history. The reflection did stirred. To be honest I don't know who it was.

first publication in Hellbender Magazine, Winter 2025 issue, April 2025

© Mykyta Ryzhykh

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Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh, an author from Ukraine, now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, and many others.

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Return by Mykyta Ryzhykh

Alexander Zvir

return

(based on news stories)

 

he thought that he was still at war– every morning trying to rescue grandmothers at bus stops

 

he asked to be tied up with ropes

he asked for an ambulance every day for no apparent reason

he asked for the day not to break so loudly

 

he thought about eternal return

he didn’t know what to do next

he drank and drank and drank and nothing changed

 

he thought he remembered how he had saved comrades in a minefield

 

he dreamed of Mercury

he dreamed of having a child

he dreamed that the creak of an old door was the sound of a enemy missile overhead

 

he thought he had forgotten how to dream

he didn’t know what to do next

he drank and drank and drank and nothing changed

 

he thought he remembered how he had finished off too many enemy wounded

 

he breathed like a dying man

he wanted to return to the battlefield

he changed his mind every hour

 

he thought he remembered the way home but he couldn’t be sure

he didn’t know what to do next

he drank and drank and drank and nothing changed

 

*  *  *

he fed the titmice on the balcony

he looked at his Facebook feed

 

he didn’t know what to do next

he drank and drank and drank and nothing changed

© Mykyta Ryzhykh

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Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh, an author from Ukraine, now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, and many others.

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I dreamt of bombs last night! by Dr. Santosh Bakaya, Ph.D.

 

Edward Eyer

I dreamt of bombs last night! 

People were scurrying for cover, 

cowering with fright. 

What was this world coming to? 

The lovers’ rendezvous 

was usurped by malevolent masked men.

When did this happen and why? 

It triggered a black hole of anxiety
within me. Sigh!

I have practiced the art of deception to
an incredible degree. 

Going around wearing a mask always -
no easy task!

But with the explosion of bombs anew -
the mask cracked from side to side. 

Everyone could see my tears! 

Why is there murder, mayhem, and
genocide? 

Everyone could see the lines of fear
on my face. 

What an absolute disgrace!

Why is there devastation, suppressed hurt,
and rampant hate? 

Everyone could hear my muted screams. 

I got up with sleep kinks in my eyes to 

see a grasshopper hopping from plant to plant 

with great aplomb and a butterfly flitting.

Flitting - flitting - flitting! 

Another bomb went off! 

Oh, it was only a balloon - bomb, followed by 

a litany of chuckles. 

A tiny tot had deflated a balloon and was happy at 

this explosion. 

The nervous breakdown that I was about
to have had been averted. 

The balance had not tipped over! 

Joyous, I broke into audacious dance moves.
Nature tittered, rejoining: 

“Who taught you these dance moves?”

“You 

You 

You!”

I replied, spinning and pirouetting as a robin
broke into song. 

A tiny boy headed towards a whimpering pup
and offered it a bowl of hot milk. 

I could glimpse a smile of gratitude on
the pup’s face 

as it slurped up the white treasure. 

© Santosh Bakaya 

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Dr. Santosh Bakaya

Internationally acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu, Dr. Santosh Bakaya is an academic, poet, novelist, essayist, creative writing mentor, and TEDx speaker with more than thirty well-received books to her credit. She writes a weekly column, Morning Meanderings in Learning and Creativity.com, and her TEDx talk on The Myth of Writer’s Block is very popular in creative writing circles. 

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Balances by Mykyta Ryzhykh

 

Image | Eva Bronzini

Balances

the silence of the water
the reflection of the cherry blossoms
balancing between
war and war

outside the broken
window, you can hear
the songs of birds

as if no one had died

night takes the sleeping soldiers
into its womb

a boy washes in the rain
near the ruins of a house

in childhood everything is black and white

I still can’t sleep sometimes
and monsters crawl out from under the bed

This poem also appeared in O:JA&L; Open: Journal of Arts & Letters

© Mykyta Ryzhykh

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Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh, an author from Ukraine, now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, and many others.

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Obstacle Course by Linette Rabsatt

 

Rahul Pandit

Obstacle Course 

Don't fear if these days you feel weaker

or if debt has you held down - 

deeper and deeper

do you have a loved one

who has strayed from the flock

don't know if he's far away

or around the block

what about the tensions

you face on your job

you know ...those days

that you cry and sob

Are you just feeling depressed

like your life is an empty nest

Is it about that true love of your life

who took your heart and cut it with a knife

Do you feel like you're the next hot topic

and when people describe you - 

it's sometimes graphic

 

Well I know someone

who can solve these problems

and give you joy

and help you erase them

When you feel like you are at your lowest

that you're tossed in the storm

and lost in the tempest

there is hope for you to make it through

so you'll get strength and feel renewed

gain confidence and forget the nonsense

because in these times of war and turbulence

you need your armor and your full strength

 

So don't give up

and never give in

You are on an obstacle course to win

Put your faith and trust

in God Almighty

and do your best to live uprightly

seek good counsel and be your brother's keeper

cause in turn Jesus will be your keeper

He is a friend anytime you need him

He loves every man and forgives their sins

so yes you still can conquer the odds

just put your faith and trust in God

© Linette Rabsatt

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Linette Rabsatt

Linette Rabsatt is a Virgin Islands poet with roots in the British Virgin Islands and the United States Virgin Islands. She began writing in 1996. Her work is available in her Kindle book, Be Inspired: Poems by Linette Rabsatt, and on her blog, Words of Ribbon. Linette writes to inspire the world with her words.

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Hope by Shirani Rajapakse

Omar William David Williams

Hope 

Sometimes the sun smiles through holes in the roof,

that piece of plastic shielding us

blowing messages of sadness from other

places, scattering our words to winds.

 

If I had a bottle I’d store my memories inside

and fling in far into the ocean, but they are all

shattered into minuscule pieces,

broken

like my dreams every night.

 

Sometimes.

 

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to walk

outside to the silence

not see men with guns growing out of their arms,

taste freedom on the air and not breathe in

the foul stench of gunpowder or

the stink of death calling, calling.

 

It’s just a dream that disappears

when I awaken to the sound of war howling outside

my window.

 

Sometimes I wish I was somewhere else

and I didn’t have to

grow up so soon.

 

Sometimes hope is all that’s left, but that’s begun to

disappear like the piece of photograph of my

grandmother that’s

turning the color of old paper,

dirty brown and fading.

© Shirani Rajapakse

This poem appears in Shirani’s poetry collection, The Way It Is. 

Shirani Rajapakse

Shirani Rajapakse is an internationally published, award-winning poet and short story writer. The author of four collections of short stories and three collections of poetry, her work appears in many literary journals and anthologies. It has been translated into Spanish, Farsi, French, and Chinese. She has travelled widely, but calls Sri Lanka home.

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