Two New Poems By Peter Golub

ноги у меня

вареные
вареники по глазам бегают
сердце копчёное
кишечник набит презервативами
за то что я читал Shakespeare
в метро кто-то во сне мне
отрезал пальцы
и привинтил критиков
которые курят мелкие
сигареты, говорят о Хармсе
(когда всем же известно что его
нет), целуются с воронами
а у меня бабушка заболела
грибком.
она спасала Африку
и теперь даже не ругается
матом




And here is the haunted drain pipe in which I found these words:

O, laptop
O, drainpipe
O, medical equipment for blood purification
O, Siberian ticks that cause Lyme borreliosis
O, interview that never happens
O, cafe that used to play good music
Girl who used to read my stuff,
Cigarettes I could smoke w/ out guilt,
Waiter who brought me free coffee

You have frozen or rusted
Impossible,
Completely practical
Cramped torso
Squeaky brain
After 15
It
Hits!
Once you've acquiesced to this
Condition
Stopped
The feeling before an iceberg
The size of Chinese libertarians-
Once the morning toothbrush
Hysteria has stopped
You begin quietly bitching
When eating with your colleagues
Once you have
More colleagues than friends and most of the day is
Spent thinking
About flea bites
Not
The flea pit orchestra
When you come home to rearrange
Your refrigerator collection
And the bathrooms are no longer a place
Of refuge but something you build
And it feels like you're having sex with you mother
Waiting for a vacation
On the beach
Where you write batteries into existence
With anti-histamines
That taste like radiator fluid

Of course everything has changed
And here is the haunted drain pipe in which i found these words:
O, laptop
O, drainpipe
O, medical equipment for blood purification
O, Siberian ticks that cause Lyme borreliosis
O, interview that never happens
O, cafe that used to play good music
you that used to read my stuff, cigarettes i could smoke w/ out
guilt, watier who brought me free coffee with shots of whiskey
you have frozen or rusted
impossible,
completely practical
cramped torso
squeeky brain
after 15 it hits!
once you've aquiesced to this
consition -stopped
the feeling before
an iceberg the size of Chinese libertarians-
once the morning toothbrush
hysteria has stopped
you begin quietly bitching
when eating with your colleagues
once you have more colleagues
than friends and most of the day is spent thinking
about flea bites
not the flea pit orchestra
when you come home to rearrange
your refrigerator collection
and the bathrooms are no longer a place
of refuge but something you build
and it feels like your having sex with you mother
waiting for a vacation
on the beach
where you write batteries into existence
with anti-histamines
that taste like radiator fluid

Of course
But when you wisely tell your children that no one changes
despite the obvious girth of your swollen ontology

Look around you
You big phony!

They are designing bodies and video games in your name
They have put your last name
on all the
toasters,
underwear and pliers in the store,
Where are your children?
No, the talking ones
Yes, them
There they are
Sailing a garbage ship
Across the Atlantic
Look there they are
In Paris
Mocking the pigeons
They have designed new underwear
They have reconstructed Atlantis
Where do you think
It all went?
The past?
H@!
Look at your laptop
Take a few good whiffs of your lover's underwear
The past is the future
Made up of the past's grocery bags
The present a collection of lost opportunities
Dressed in grey business suits and fat ties
Your lover has long since gone
He has replaced himself with another animal
Where is she?
No, that's a gerbil

Run,
Run, run,
Run, run, run run
Run
Run run
Run run run run

Go
Go go
Go go go go
Go go go go go go go

Sew your underwear into a kite
Toss from your window your desktop computer
Donate your car to public radio
And buy a china-man with a rickshaw
Order a carafe and pour it into your purse
Take the homeless woman out on the town
Sleep with the waitress
Of course she won't sleep with you
Of course you should ask her to a play
And offer her the hamster's hand in marriage

Yes
Yes yes yes
Yes

You've got it
Now toss it
And grab that chair over there
We're gonna need it
Where we're going


Peter Golub was born in the Soviet Union and emigrated to the United States in the late 1980s. He is in Russia for the summer seeking out his Russian contemporaries who stayed behind. Audio recordings of their poems will accompany a forthcoming anthology of their work, in Russian, with Golub's translations into English. Peter Golub lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Пётр Голуб родился в Советском Союзе и эмигрировал в конце 1980-ах. Постоянное место жительства - Лас Вегас, штат Невада. В данный момент находится в Москве и составляет антологию молодых русских поэтов для перевода на английский язык.