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Contents

Borderless, January 2026

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Sense and Nonsense: Atonal, Imperfect, Incomplete… Click here to read.

Translations

Akashe Aaj Choriye Delam Priyo(I sprinkle in the sky) by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Four of his own Malay poems have been translated by Isa Kamari. Click here to read.

Six Fragments by Sayad Hashumi have been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Five poems by Pravasini Mahakuda have been translated to English from Odia by Snehaprava Das. Click here to read.

A Poet in Exile by Dmitry Blizniuk has been translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov. Click here to read.

Kalponik or Imagined by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Pandies Corner

Songs of Freedom: The Seven Mysteries of Sumona’s Life is an autobiographical narrative by Sumona (pseudonym), translated from Hindustani by Grace M Sukanya. These stories highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Ron Pickett, Snehaprava Das, Stephen Druce, Phil Wood, Akintoye Akinsola, Michael Lauchlan, Pritika Rao, SR Inciardi, Richard Murphy, Jim Murdoch, Pramod Rastogi, Joy Anne O’Donnell, Andrew Leggett, Ananya Sarkar, Annette Gagliardi, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In What is a Prose Poem?, Rhys Hughes tells us what he understands about the genre and shares four of his. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Duties For Those Left Behind

Keith Lyons muses on a missing friend in Bali. Click here to read.

That Time of Year

Rick Bailey muses about the passage of years. Click here to read.

All So Messi!

Farouk Gulsara takes a look at events in India and Malaysia and muses. Click here to read.

How Twins Revive Spiritual Heritage Throbbing Syncretism

Prithvijeet Sinha takes us to the Lucknow of 1800s. Click here to read.

Recycling New Jersey

Karen Beatty gives a glimpse of her life. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In ‘All Creatures Great and Small’, Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of animal interactions. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In The Cat Stationmaster of Kishi, Suzanne Kamata visits a small town where cats are cherished. Click here to read.

Essays

The Untold Stories of a Wooden Suitcase

Larry S. Su recounts his past in China and weaves a narrative of resilience. Click here to read.

A Place to Remember

Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia dwells on her favourite haunt. Click here to read.

Christmas that Almost Disappeared

Farouk Gulsara writes of Charles Dickens’ hand in reviving the Christmas spirit. Click here to read.

The Last of the Barbers: How the Saloon Became the Salon (and Where the Gossip Went)

Charudutta Panigrahi writes an essay steeped in nostalgia and yet weaving in the present. Click here to read.

Aeons of Art

In Art is Alive, Ratnottama Sengupta introduces the antiquity of Indian art. Click here to read.

Stories

Old Harry’s Game

Ross Salvage tells a poignant story about friendship with an old tramp. Click here to read.

Mrs. Thompson’s Package

Mary Ellen Campagna explores the macabre in a short fiction. Click here to read.

Hold on to What You Let Go

Rajendra Kumar Roul relates a story of compassion and expectations. Click here to read.

Used Steinways

Jonathan B. Ferrini shares a story about pianos and people set in Los Angeles. Click here to read.

The Rose’s Wish

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a fable involving flowers and bees. Click here to read.

Discussion

A brief discusion of Whereabouts of the Anonymous: Exploration of the Invisible by Rajorshi Patranabis with an exclusive interview with the author on his supernatural leanings. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Showkat Ali’s The Struggle: A Novel, translated from Bengali by V. Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir. Clickhere to read.

An excerpt from Anuradha Marwah’s The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Showkat Ali’s The Struggle: A Novel, translated from Bengali by V. Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir. Click here to read.

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Anuradha Marwah’s The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta. Click here to read.

Udita Banerjee reviews The Lost Pendant, translated (from Bengali) Partition poetry edited by Angshuman Kar. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Rakesh Dwivedi’s Colonization Crusade and Freedom of India: A Saga of Monstrous British Barbarianism around the Globe. Click here to read.

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Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

A Poet in Exile: Ukranian Poetry in Translation

Poetry by Dmitry Blizniuk, translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov

Dmitry Blizniuk

Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Five Points, Rattle, Los Angeles Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Plume, The London Magazine and many others.  A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). His poems have been awarded RHINO 2022 Translation Prize and his folio had been selected as a runner-up in the Gregory O’Donoghue Competition and the 2025 Gabo Prize finalist.

Directory:   http://www.pw.org/directory/writers/dmitry_blizniuk

A POET IN EXILE 

The sky above the highway is low
like a cunning dog's muzzle above a steaming saucepan.
A one-winged angel of advertising
stands by the roadside:
Aquafresh, perfect water of gods.
And I'm an imperfect verb, just someone in a windbreaker,
with pieces of canvas on my head that flap like a pterodactyl.
Here's my garden,
set back some distance from history,
a prehistoric place for ancient bugs,
and one of them stands on its hind legs
in depression,
while the gloomy autumn stares from above.

We've run away from the simmering house
like milk that is boiling over. Now I'm single again.
The sun hangs behind a ruffled up shed,
like a bloody yolk on a cold frying pan
until the nightfall dumps it in the garbage,
while I'm looking for clean socks, sniffing noisily
like a dog with a mallard in its jaws.
I've had to leave the city and women behind,
make friends with the blissful world of sticks,
Like Lorca, I managed to avoid a firing squad.
He's grown old, he looks like a grey parrot with an earring,
keeps a rapier in his summer kitchen,
grows grapes and cucumbers, and something sparkles in his eyes
when blood pressure squeezes him
like a tube of Aquafresh.
If not for the Internet, I wouldn't exist.

A cat called Nostalgia
licks his balls on the windowsill.
The lampshade is a temple of flies, priestesses of summer schizophrenia.
I'm still destined to return,
I feel the power of a boomerang within me.
It's going to bend my way and carry me back to my youth,
otherwise, I don't care where.
An eyelid with long lashes has fallen away from the face of a garden doll.
The blue eye is unprotected now,
and the rubber body under the rain feels so at home in the garden.
For how many years will I decompose in the humus
in the garden of gods,
lie in the ground and see the black earth,
black caviar in the eyes of dawn,
then stretch up to the sky as a green needle of grass?
The smell of the rain that has just stopped is like spilled glue.
It's so fresh that I want to run up to the sky, but I can't.
A poet in exile is more than just a poet.
And a man? -- There is no man anymore.

Sergey Gerasimov is a Ukraine-based writer, poet, and translator of poetry. Among other things, he has studied psychology. He is the author of several academic articles on cognitive activity. His stories and poems written in English have appeared in Adbusters, Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, J Journal, The Bitter Oleander, and Acumen, among many others. The poetry he translated has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. His books include Feuerpanorama: Ein ukrainisches Kriegstagebuch (dtv Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2022) and Oasis (Gypsy Shadow, 2018).

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International