AFTERWARDS
the bird flies out,
the nestling
watches her from its nest:
the swing of her wings,
the turn of her tail,
the air yielding under them.
horizon is tilted,
the world around
gets tightened in an egg.
if she doesn’t come back
the shell will be its home.
BOUNDED
Bounded by a semolina lump,
by the border of mom’s
skirt, by the cup cracked
along the rose,
by the flower
given to mom not by her husband,
bounded by mom’s husband
while he is bounded by the memory
of the chicken’s head which his father
cut off in front of his eyes, how
can you not be bounded after that, what
if all of a sudden it’s you who
or it’s your head
bounded by an egg,
by chain-link fencing,
by a grain, by vertex,
by a father’s name,
by mom’s lump,
the border
of her skirt…
Now that you know
what kind of beast I am,
set me free
or run.
Biography:
Hanna Komar is an award-winning poet and translator based in Minsk, currently working at the Belarusian PEN Centre. She has published two poetry collections (Fear of Heights in Belarusian and a bilingual collection Recycled) and a collection of Belarusian translations of Charles Bukowski. Hanna writes in Belarusian and translates her texts into English.
