3 poems by Mykyta Ryzhykh

***
You can hope you never get cancer
You may not understand how you can lose your left leg
You can trust that your daughter won't strangle you in the middle of the night
One may consider the Holocaust unthinkable, but thoughts are only an imprint of matter
Everything will happen one day
Everything will happen again one day
And everything will be the same
But it doesn't matter anymore
After all, we know that there is never anything new
Every time Jesus dies anew in every tree and Nazi ghetto
And in each new round of history his body becomes more and more dilapidated
But why? Why can't he die completely?
Death? Immortality? Because it's not death?
Death exists only in our consciousness (why does Jesus die so often?)
Death is just a stop of time in an immobilized mirror.
The Holocaust may be considered unthinkable, but thoughts are only an imprint of action.
One may consider the Holocaust unthinkable, but thoughts are only an imprint of inaction
And a red-light flashes in the eyes of someone walking along the road




***
аnd when the soldier fell 
there was no one 
who could help him up





***
axiom 
of emptiness 
in the cemetery

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Mykyta Ryzhykh is the winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs and Ukrainian contests Vytoky, Shoduarivska Altanka, Khortytsky dzvony. A laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik, Lyceum, Twelve, named after Dragomoshchenko and a nominated for Pushcart Prize, he was published in Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, and elsewhere.