Luminous—the ink you pour
around bullet holes
to paint blooms
pain turned to
petals, terror—to
style and stigma
Ovaries fill with
juice, and we too learn:
lives are fragile & can get broken
As for life, it says yes
Always—yes
No use
denying it
Oksana Maksymchuk is the author of poetry collections Xenia (Piramida, 2005) and Lovy (Smoloskyp, 2008) in the Ukrainian. Her English-language poems appeared in AGNI, the Irish Times, Paris Review, The Poetry Review, and other journals. Her debut English-language poetry collection, Still City (2024), is with Carcanet Press.
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