04/05/2025
Up next in Pinky Thinker Press: Issue No. 13 Vegetable Garden by Mykyta Ryzhykh. Mykyta Ryzhykh published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, on the portals Litсenter, Ice Floe Press etc.
Text: Grandma didn’t know a potato would sprout from her eye sockets / And so in the reddening night we are like thieves trying to dig something out / We pull out from the depths of time the grandmother’s skull / The watchman’s asleep / we put sleeping pills in his beer / We’re stealing potatoes from the collective hair field / One grey hair belonged to my grandmother / One layer of earth belonged to my grandfather’s bones / How many more parents are secretly buried in the belly of the collective farm? / We steal memories in the foreign field of our parents / We are stolen through birth / And the vegetable gas ghetto spreads with guttural pipe everywhere / And the spiky bread ghetto rattles out of nowhere / Move a few metres away: there’s the belly of a starving woman who never became anyone’s mother / A little to the left a dead officer of one of the dozens of armie / A little to the right is a crucified and unresurrected Jew / And behind by the scarecrow / Behind the horizon / A raven sings a song behind / The raven can’t sing and only drinks air
Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund. For information on events, go to MiddlesexCountyCulture.com
