by Olga Livshin
Left-Leaning Sonnet
For Maria Gapotchenko
What can we do WHAT CAN WE DO We
can hide in a sonnet Its milky worn
warmth You look hot in a sonnet
Like a baby elephant Pull the taffeta
over your eyes Turn off the news
How to help from under a word comforter
Stick out one hand Poke the nearest sufferer
Hey fellow victim Hola Pryvit How’s it all
hanging Do you need anything
I know about tragedies Can I write one about you
Or sing you into the velvet car of my ghazal
Sell all my books and Venmo you a little sum
I would send a sun or my hardy son but
don’t know what am I doing What have I done
Right-Leaning Sonnet
I say you can’t see borders from space just fat land slices
and blue elixir He chuckles When did that ever matter
I say You make money from different parts of the world
He talks about the history of empire
and dictators cycling like water I say Nature
flits like pixies Burning Siberian peat
brought Anchorage soot He says Sad Not
your fault Enjoy your short life I say I am
enjoying my friendships in Lviv and Kharkiv and
want hamsters and parakeets to live on He replies
Arrive Thirty-four years late Better than never
Look The whole planet on your well-chosen plate
Sweet and staring at us both with disbelief
Docile and looking up with brilliant hope
Olga Livshin’s poetry recently appears in Poetry, The Southern Review, and AGNI. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019) and translator of Today is a Different War by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska (Arrowsmith Press, 2023).
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