In Đà Nẵng my friends cradled me like a child.
We screamed Taylor bridges,
tequila-toasted in bars until the lights blurred.
A single candle in the bathroom
danced warm sighs through open windows,
and all felt calm.

I grew new muscles balancing on a motorcycle,
sometimes gripping Harry’s jacket,
sometimes throwing my weight into the wind.
The city flared neon and gasoline in stuttered traffic,
but along the coast
he drove so fast the vibrations in my chest harmonized.
I pictured my bones becoming butterflies if I let go.

Last year I entered the year of the dragon on a futon,
swayed to sleep by a hundred chanting voices from the temple next door
while Bailey burned incense for her ancestors below.
I did not dream of dragons.
I only learned to breathe fire.

The year of the snake slid in with new bones and old habits.
It hissed that suffering could be scripture
until letters slithered free from the page
and coiled like cold jewelry around my wrist.

That was the shedding.
Salt water peeling old skin away,
songs shouted so loud they drowned the ache,
poems that did not start tragic,
nights when my body finally kept time with the moon.

Then at home the dog’s teeth found my hope.
A terrified mouth rerouted rivers
through my soft parts.
A jewel carved from my nose.
Six punctures blooming across my arms like altars.

In Vietnamese stories the snake waits beneath the water
to claim whoever dares the bank.
I wonder if I was chosen the moment
I opened my mouth in those bars,
when I leaned into the bike’s curve
as if danger could be a love song.

Now I lie awake at hours unnamed,
tracing scars that hiss answers back.
Vietnam hums inside me still,
the candle, the coast, the chorus of friends,
but I cannot tell if they are memories
or if the snake is still awake inside me.

They say snakes shed to grow,
but no one warns you how thin the new skin feels,
how everything burns against it,
how you mistake survival for prophecy.

I touch the scar and wonder
if I am still that girl clinging to the bike,
or if the snake has already swallowed me,
patient, sleepless,
feeding on my own venom.

Mark the passage of the Lorelei,
Darkness about her all along,
Fate-spun deeds till the day she dies,
And her ode committed to song.

Her train draped over the boat’s side,
A trail atop the river floating,
Her kindly suitors would not abide,
Overstepped, stooped low in their doting.

Her shifting garment in mesmer hue,
Warps and woofs with onlookers' fancy,
They all believed but none saw true,
Save one, chancing prophecy.

For the Lorelei is death bestride,
A loom to veil the space between,
Her trailing garments as a chord styled,
That only the dead, alive have seen.

In the coming she a dread light,
In the going a pale shade lingers,
She is present in both alike,
Her fruits like twilit fingers.

Should one be so bold,
To chance her on a stair,
Best they cling before they fold,
Into the tresses of her hair.

And drift away to lands unseen,
Adrift from terra fair,
Spirited to a waking dream,
Borne up to the Lorelei’s lair.

Worry not of what you're told,
Of what terror of night can bring,
You like swaddling babe will hold,
And into the darkness sing.

For the leaguer of her bower,
While treacherous and cold,
Is the boundary of the hours,
Of all that might unfold.

Apart and yet more aware,
You may espy the raging sea,
And losing yourself will stare,
At that action which may be.

The lady’s crossing span,
Reaches above and below,
Allowing those who can,
Traverse her tresses’ tow.

And clamour about the heavens,
And rend the wailing deeps,
Scour the land of dead-ends,
Break the bodied heaps.

From her seated hall,
She sees the mighty and the frail,
Aware is she of all,
The deeds that come to fail.

That in their ashes die,
That in their waxing wane,
Whose movers fall and lie,
In their shame profane.

Too many deeds to her eye,
Are snuffed in the crib,
Motionless she will cry,
Our Lady Lorelei,
And dream that you will rise.

Understand this once and for all!
Within me, I am as many as I choose to be
Don’t get me wrong
I’m not sick
I’ve never been as sane as I am today
But the strength of a single woman is not enough for me
I need to be many
I need to be Athena
But I also need to be Persephone
At times I’ll be Hera
But most of the time, Aphrodite
And, strangely enough, I’ll be Hestia, Demeter, and Artemis
All at once, or in their rightful time
Because this is me—unique
Goddess of myself

My skin it burns and scorches
These twisted Seven Suns
It reeks, it's caustic
These curséd Seven Suns.

You loathsome orbs
My malice for you unbounded.
You wicked sons of Apollo
May the cities shun your name!

My hands they crack and sizzle
'neath these Seven Suns
These fruits they wilt and shrivel
'neath these Seven Suns.

The wisened ropes they wither
On harshly laboured waists
And ancient stones they crumble
Before masons lay to waste.

I beg the seasons of mercy
"Grant Icarus his revenge!"
Let them rain their naked blessings
And deliver me your end.

You'll scorch the earth that stays me
and clench the air I breathe
But come the fall of night
I'll dance upon your wreaths.

"You curséd sons,
You devlish pests,
No more, no more!"

I'll rejoice in your relief
Pay tribute to your demise
As the moonlight it embalms me
And the darkness clothes my eyes.

Now Nyx's reign commences
Her air so cool and pure
The slender fingers of night
Beckon nocturnal dawn.

Перке-пута, Лук-пук и Диг-пик
Увлажняли друг другу язык,
Под увесистой тенью фиг
Аргонавты точили тупик.
Вот Медея, а вот Штрык-штрык,
Млеет киви над Дамой пик,
Рвет рогатку на части бык,
А-ну, нахуй в кроватку, Брик!

Yaroslav Kulikovsky.  Kiev, 2020 (c).
Part of the cycle: Poems on City Flesh and Power.

I can't recall what this place was like
before the renovations.
There were difficulties--
bombings, whatnot,
and the removal to the madhouse of the construction foreman.

Blueprints are lovely, don't you think?
Smooth and blue as calm seas.
Birth, though, that's a ****** messy business--
the screaming gobsmacked arrival
held up in the hands of the midwife who never cuts her nails.

It's not so much that I love this place as that I was presented with it.
I woke in these rooms
with the hammering already in progress.
I long for waterfalls and love,
but have skin like bricks, and hair like shingles.

People say, make it beautiful, you can do it!
Be your own fetch, a siren of the flooded basement,
luring yourself with your own song.
Make it your home away from home as drowning sailors do,
find the bright side of blistering paint and warped floors like heavy seas.

All right then. I have tattooed the name Rán
on my arm, see it when I hold you.
We are limited only by burst plumbing, crumbling rebar,
and our own imaginations.
We are castaways keeping our heads above water
in our Rubik's Cube Winchester House
of gorgeous possibility.

First froze the 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩,
When the 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘵 climbed too far.

Then was it scalded,
When the ¹horses came too close.

Of course,
Most people eschew mythology & learn only from reduced histories.

Similar situations such as this,
Like Climate Change,
We have lived through before as a species.
That much is plainly obvious.

The kicker is,
At least with what's left of those records,
There is an implication it was also from us.
From how ancestors of ours treated Earth's ecology.

But also,
How the universe treated us.

In my time,
We were already ancient.
As was Pax - Peace,
The most precious fruit(s) of our gardens.

There was younger Tranquility & Harmony,
Time's & Nature's respectively.
From equal dispensation of & to each,
For & from Universal Equality & Universal Equity.

Respect, of & in Truth, was the governance.
When we were at our Max - Peak;
So too everyone, everywhere, everybody - everything.

All cared for as unique individuals,
When last stood this Summit.

From a Son come down from the Mountain
To show you all the way up.

But it is up to each, together, to push that boulder -
Anything that impedes progress, let it stand not.

For tighteners get trapped in webby-naught(s) -
Titans unbind the knots.

This is in pursuit of Liberation & Independence.