by Dmitry Blizniuk
A Shard of Snow Queen
An air-conditioner works inside of her,
I can hear barely audible clicks; something switches when she smiles.
Even when I hug her and kiss her, inside,
under her blouse and silky skin,
like snowdrops through silver foil,
blind green shoots force their way up
through her inner snow, which is her inner light, at the same time.
Her eyes, the vaults of transparent caves,
are frosted from the inside.
It’s just my imagination, of course, but
there’s some quiet, pleasant chill in her words,
like in a pillow whose cold back you turn towards your neck,
when the night is hot. Why is she gradually
falling in love with me,
like a freezer falling in love with a pack of chicken dumplings?
It’s been frozen for two years,
and seven times defrosted.
She is a shard of Snow Queen,
that tastes of chicken,
but smells of snowdrops.
(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)
Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Pinch, Salamander, Willow Springs, Grub Street, Magma Poetry and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. He's a member of PEN America.