Portside

A Guest from War

By Oksana Maksymchuk

In a bed we set up

on the floor

in the hallway, where the walls

are most solid

with no windows to burst

she rolls into a ball

and falls & falls

not hearing her own sobs

she got so used to them

Packing and hauling bags

throwing bags over train tracks

suitcases and small bundles

of severed arms, hands

straining to sign

some desperate last message:

the name of a loved one

instructions for making

Grandma’s heirloom pie

In an endless cellar

that’s now her mind, she expands

testing the possible exits

with the outer limits

of her own body, exposed

bare flesh now

no skin

Oksana Maksymchuk is the author of poetry collections Xenia and Lovy in the Ukrainian. Her English-language poems appeared in AGNI, The Irish Times, The Paris Review, The Poetry Review, and other journals. She co-edited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, and co-translated Apricots of Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk and The Voices of Babyn Yar by Marianna Kiyanovska. Oksana holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University.