Unsteady Topography

Unsteady Topography Oksana Maksymchuk (bio) Even inside a warI'm still at workmaking life delicious Mutinous pastries rise and falllike a tidal wavein the makeshift ovenwe've assembled out of loose bricksin the communal yard —a collective poem In a room across the streetnow and again, I catch a glimpse oftwo elderly neighborsmaking loveLED light glowing above themlike the moon Standing in the fullglare of the war, I'm a surfacereflecting its awesome lightshadows emerging due tothe unusual featuresof my own darkened soul its hills and valleysriverbeds emptied of dreamssleepless, venomous lakesteeming with life I'm a sucker for sweetnessdelicate, frothing streamscreaming the landscape End Page 11 Yet inside me, mountains crumblecraters open on the papery surface tall load-bearing cakesbreak into a scream End Page 12 Oksana Maksymchuk Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection, Still City, is forthcoming with Carcanet Press in 2024. She is also the author of two award-winning poetry collections, Xenia and Lovy, in Ukrainian. Her poems appeared in AGNI, The Irish Times, The Paris Review, The Poetry Review, and many other journals. She co-edited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary poetry, and cotranslated Apricots of Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk and The Voices of Babyn Yar by Marianna Kiyanovska. Oksana holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press