post-soviet sleeper car

Olga Mikolaivna

towards centuries 

trains speeding. by night to the crimea, to warsaw.  

 in a sleeper cabin with a stranger on an opposing bunk.  

quietude  

between twilight and sunup. paused at an intersecting site. 

blue, red flashes denoting synergies, this isn’t a nationalistic integration  

along the road. or in the midst of forest. green fields and wheat in rows for bread. sunflowers  close their heads until the morning light. подсолнечник —- beneath sun girasol — turn to sun 

i dreamt i crossed from zagreb into bulgaria. fringes of untruths 
all customs look the same. 

border = dispositif 

a lonesome man looks out into the open window smoking.  
when sleeplessness arises bodies in unrest.  

 the man walks to the corridor.  
 landscape zooming by 

and the meeting of electric lines feel like movement, perpetual swaying. (e)motion

unresolved dreams.  

clothed in adidas with a cigarette  
foreground to the window  
open to remedials of a pastoral landscape  
so iconic 

insomniacs as deathless 

echo sounds undesired from the catacombs of history.  

in sans soleil a woman’s voice reads a letter from a wanderer, a phantom friend. describing  bodies sleeping on a ferry crossing ocean, sea. curled up, drawn out into distance, glances raw or  meek, inhaling cigarettes, resembling so many many during innumerable wars of modernity.  

“… others take the ferry: waiting, immobility, snatches of sleep. curiously all of that makes me  think of a past or future war: night trains, air raids, fallout shelters, small fragments of war  enshrined in everyday life.” 

 the transit.  

 motion of bodies over sea and land. 

release a historic wound scar onto a lineage.  

bodies carried into night, morbid disillusionment no control 

lacking 

knowledge of what may be ahead. a trance of journey 

a trace  

daybreak on the horizon —

Born in Kyiv, olga works in the (intersectional/textual) liminal space of photography, word, translation, and installation. She is interested in memory, dream spaces, absences, inheritance, (dis)place, and the construction of language. She cofounded and co-curated Desuetude Press. Her work can be found in Cleveland Review of Books, TQR, New Delta Review, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. She is getting her MFA in creative writing at UCSD, and her debut chapbook "cities as fathers" is available through Tilted House.