Your son shows you a Tik Tok clip;
You both play Russian computer games.
Simulators that glorify World War Two/
mid-century armour & the cold war era
where each new development increased
penetration; rounds that defeated steel’s
stubborn thickness. You watch your son
take to the skies over maps of Ukraine.
1941. Get shot down a lot. The next best
thing to flying solo. Through his phone’s
cracked canopy he plays you a black streak
over Kyiv; a medieval, barbed arrowhead
punching through the sky’s grey cuirass. For
fifty years the fulcrum has been idle; three up
-grades, engines, radar, missiles, but never seen
combat. Seventies bones good enough to mix
it over the capital with its modern successors,
flankers & frogfeet; a retro jet where the ghost
got good purchase from his re-engineered multi-
role fighter. The first ace in a day in fifty years.
Not since Alam’s F-86 sabre rattled in the Indo-
Pakistani war has the aerial world revelled in six
kills in one day. Your son doesn’t bother to fact
check the video, sold on social media’s bravado;
a pilot’s last stand. He tells you the ghost was shot
down, but ejected. His short clip trimmed to fit.
Interested in submitting your own work to this column? Send it to the “We Stand with Ukraine” section of our Submittable portal here—fees will be waived for this particular category. We look forward to reading your responses.
B. R. Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He has published four collections of poetry, two chapbooks, an artist’s book and a verse novel. His ninth poetry collection, The Wet Tropics will be released in 2022. He was short-listed in the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize. He teaches English, lives in Brisbane and in his spare time watches birds.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog:
We Stand With Ukraine: “The Ghost of Kyiv” by B. R. Dionysius
Through his phone’s / cracked canopy he plays you a black streak / over Kyiv
In this week’s edition of literary works written in support and solidarity with the citizens of Ukraine, we are proud to present a poem by B. R. Dionysius. “The Ghost of Kyiv” movingly comments on the distancing voyeurism of watching tragedy unfold from afar, and of wide-ranging human affairs condensed into byte-sized consumption. As we continue to navigate the ever-shifting boundaries between the virtual and the real, Dionysius’ poem works between man and machine, its precise lines edging out the bodies caught within them.
The Ghost of Kyiv
Your son shows you a Tik Tok clip;
You both play Russian computer games.
Simulators that glorify World War Two/
mid-century armour & the cold war era
where each new development increased
penetration; rounds that defeated steel’s
stubborn thickness. You watch your son
take to the skies over maps of Ukraine.
1941. Get shot down a lot. The next best
thing to flying solo. Through his phone’s
cracked canopy he plays you a black streak
over Kyiv; a medieval, barbed arrowhead
punching through the sky’s grey cuirass. For
fifty years the fulcrum has been idle; three up
-grades, engines, radar, missiles, but never seen
combat. Seventies bones good enough to mix
it over the capital with its modern successors,
flankers & frogfeet; a retro jet where the ghost
got good purchase from his re-engineered multi-
role fighter. The first ace in a day in fifty years.
Not since Alam’s F-86 sabre rattled in the Indo-
Pakistani war has the aerial world revelled in six
kills in one day. Your son doesn’t bother to fact
check the video, sold on social media’s bravado;
a pilot’s last stand. He tells you the ghost was shot
down, but ejected. His short clip trimmed to fit.
Interested in submitting your own work to this column? Send it to the “We Stand with Ukraine” section of our Submittable portal here—fees will be waived for this particular category. We look forward to reading your responses.
B. R. Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He has published four collections of poetry, two chapbooks, an artist’s book and a verse novel. His ninth poetry collection, The Wet Tropics will be released in 2022. He was short-listed in the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize. He teaches English, lives in Brisbane and in his spare time watches birds.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog:
Contributor:- B. R. Dionysius
; Place: - Ukraine
; Writer: - B. R. Dionysius
; Tags: - machinery
, - Poetry
, - social commentary
, - social media
, - voyeurism
, - War