Elections

Elena Fanailova

1. Donetsk Elections 2014

Texts of no avail
Into the war zone.
Sent to a young woman.
She volunteered to go alone.

Elections in the East.
A flicker in the steppe.
Battle for the airport.
The city sinks into sand.
The city sinks under ice.
I had thought
Their generation
Would be spared that fate.
 

2. Voronezh Elections 2002

It’s night outside.
A flicker in the steppe.
Monstrous Russian March.
Fuck it’s cold.
And the car broke down.

Alright, a couple of texts.
Early cellphone connection.
And Serezha is not far-off.
And my brother with me.

The madhouse nurses
Talk into the mic
About their disappeared 
About evacuation towards Leningrad
And what I should tell Putin
My being a journalist from Moscow
Tell him right into the Kremlin:
Volodya, you’re our only hope.
Baby, stop this war
In Chechnya
And add to our pensions.

translated from the Russian by Eugene Ostashevsky

Read the original in Russian

Elena Fanailova is a Russian poet and journalist with Radio Liberty. Her oppositional poetry examines the effects of political and gender oppression on daily life. Once noted for her verbal pyrotechnics, where slang and rhythmical breaks undercut high art conventions, Fanailova is currently experimenting with absence of poetic affect.

Eugene Ostashevsky is the author, most recently, of The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi and the translator, most recently, of The Fire Horse: Children’s Poems by Mayakovsky + Mandelstam + Kharms, both published in 2017 by NYRB.