Dmitry Blizniuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Sergey Gerasimov
Insomnia
insomnia.
the feeling of a bat flying over a building site.
a green ray of a star draws the curtains apart,
turns over the woman sleeping by my side,
like a boat drying out on a night sandbank,
and reflects in her, and fills her
with dark phosphorescing moisture.
the woman licks her dry lips in her sleep
and starts talking quickly,
swallowing the words like an otter,
like a page torn out of a book and thrown in fire.
Dmitry Blizniuk’s writing appears in POETRY, AGNI, Beloit, Rattle, Los Angeles Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, and many others.
Sergey Gerasimov’s writing has been published in Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, POETRY, The Threepenny Review, and dozens of other places.