Anton Yakovlev


CHICKEN

Like any other day, the country was troubled,
flapping its upside-down flags from the shotgun poles.
We needed to test how much we meant to each other
and drove each other off the cliff. The corpse
we landed on didn't smell yet, which was bizarre,
as it had lain there for at least two hundred
years, and even longer according to some.
Windshield wipers waved relentlessly,
and beauty never came to the rescue.
Years later, the dog keeps whistling.
Who won? Unrequited rhetorical
questions provide their own orgasm.

SINCE HIS SUICIDE
 
You said we were all better off      I couldn’t recall
 
his eyes      My cheapest rental
 
up the gravel road      Hanging
 
by fire forever      I saw him in skeleton sweat
 
Noose on his neck      Tourists gathered
 
screaming reviews      He used to bark to himself
 
Flooded the streets      Now you told me
 
we all missed him too much      Your sunglasses gleamed
 
Fire under the door      His body shaking

EUROPEAN HISTORY IN SYMBOLS

Guillotine here
guillotine there

and there

and there

and there

and here
and here

and here

and




Anton Yakovlev's latest chapbook Chronos Dines Alone, winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize 2018, was published by SurVision Books. He is also the author of Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017) and two prior chapbooks. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Measure, Amarillo Bay, and elsewhere. The Last Poet of the Village, a book of translations of poetry by Sergei Yesenin, is forthcoming from Sensitive Skin Books.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page