1 poem
by olga mikolaivna
Born in Kiev, olga works within the mediums of photography, text, and installation. She is interested in memory, mysticism, inheritance, (dis)place, and the construction of language. She cofounded and co-curated desuetude gallery in Olympia, WA. She currently resides in Philadelphia, where she is pursuing her master’s in English at Rutgers Camden.
beneath a mountain
streets continued as straight lines. dark, gray, dingy. stealthy monuments appeared on grand boulevards. of whom, we never found out. never cared to. brutalism doesn’t age, only gaining rapport with years. a river flows through the city, cutting apart cement blocks and luxury hotels.
in a restaurant named masha on the bottom floor of beaten brutalism, is where we choose to break fast, attempt at getting along. the diners on that sunny morning are old men in leisure sweatsuits smoking cigarettes, drinking espressos, discussing sun day subjects. our server, a young man in a heinous uniform resembling something of a porter from the 1950s, or a server with better tastes of the same era, of the grand, illustrious and illusionary united states. a table without an ashtray, unheard of, unseen. hanging from rafters are pathos, spiders, filodendrons. suspended in, and feeding on cigarette smoke, as though oxygen, much needed to thrive.
we walked through pouring rain. soaked for the sake of nothing. nothing nothing nothing nothing isn’t. a disappointing venture with no language guiding either one of us. i hailed a cab without a place to go, hoping to make everything better. through the rain, the cab driver took us to the restaurants. trees lined the street. beer and cake was dinner.
we fight our way through rain. a dog on the other side of the street stops at the crosswalk, looking to the left and right before assailing itself to us, following us for blocks. we shut the fuck up.