Awake at night, I misread a wild lioness
nursing a baby for a wild loneliness
A Wild Loneliness Nursing a Baby Captured For the First Time
Was that the white dove of annunciation?
Or the serpent — fanged, forked, uncoiled
in its stealth, its own wild loneliness?
Originally published by Duration Press
Genya Turovskaya is a poet, translator, and psychotherapist. She was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and grew up in New York City. She is the author of the chapbooks Calendar (Ugly Duckling Presse), The Tides (Octopus Books), New Year’s Day (Octopus Books), and Dear Jenny (Supermachine). Her poetry and translations of contemporary Russian poets have appeared in Chicago Review, Conjunctions, A Public Space, Octopus, Asymptote, PEN Poetry, Fence, Sangam Poetry, Seedings, The Elephants, and other publications. She is the translator of Aleksandr Skidan’s Red Shifting (Ugly Duckling Presse). She is the co-translator of Elena Fanailova’s The Russian Version (Ugly Duckling Presse), which won the University of Rochester’s Three Percent 2010 award for Best Translated Book of Poetry. She is also a co-translator of Arkadii Dragomoshchenko’s Endarkenment: Selected Poems (Wesleyan).