Spring 2019, Volume 26

Poetry by Askold Skalsky

Simultaneity

Maybe everything happens at once—
restless copper and tall windows,  
rillets trickling with summer water
behind wooden privies in overgrown
yards raging with sadistic backhoes
and new-world land rovers on the make.
That’s what we thirst for—a slivovitz
with gipsy hidalgos and high-heeled
rappers miniskirted in a country that
pretends to linearity amid dense drooping
catkins in the mud, the melancholy walls
of a decaying street that smells of stale
fricassees and hot pates while people
cross with invisible grappling hooks
over their shoulders, their minds worn
out by dull, unthinkable solutions

 

 

 

BIO: Originally from Ukraine, Askold Skalsky currently resides in Hagerstown, Maryland and has had poems in over 300 magazines and online journals in the USA as well as in literary publications in Canada, England, Ireland, mainland Europe, Turkey, Australia, and Bangladesh. A first collection, The Ponies of Chuang Tzu, was published in 2011 by Horizon Tracts in New York City.