Sonya Devyatkin

Brooklyn Bullies

Simon was scary. He was the school bully.

Along with Oona and Oona: two different girls,

one brunette and one blonde,

with the same name. Simon choked my brother

till my brother passed out. And one of the Oonas

kicked me in between my thighs that made me

lose a bit of my womanhood from a young age.

Lea was a bully too. She teased me for my hippie

pants, flowers on flowers, that I loved. She was

a beautiful redhead who actually, later on, overdosed

and disappeared into a dark ether, I don’t know

what became of her. The other bully, brunette Oona

became a famous actress who played in Hollywood

hits and shit. Blonde Oona I don’t know, she… could’ve

been the serial killer from Monster cause I swear

they looked the same. And Simon, last I saw him,

he was walking into his parent’s house, run down and

boarded up with blocks as if abandoned. We never saw

him walk out of there again. One day he just stopped

showing up for the yellow school bus that picked him

up outside of his house. Then after that, we all forgot

about him.

First Break

Nicky, blonde Irish boy,

broke my finger at a class picnic

in the summer one day. I was rushed to

the emergency room, where I cried

and held onto my finger, which was

shattered and disfigured. This was after

my father pulled on it, hoping to relocate it,

no dice. Fucking AGONY. My brother,

he ran fifteen blocks to meet me at the hospital

where I still had to wait, among hundreds of people

who also were waiting at the Brooklyn Methodist

Hospital cause something in them was broken, too.

I sat there and I cried and I cried and I cried

and then I just blacked out from the pain.

One year later I saw Nicky at the Y while

I was running track, after thousands of dollars

spent on surgery and physical therapy, and

he was scared shitless, let me tell you, the look

on his face, was pained with imaginary piss trickling down

his thighs. We walked up to each other and he quietly said

he was sorry.

To which

I just smirked a little, brushed it off

and said, “hey,

shit happens.”

Hungry Eyes

Woman, fat and ugly as sin,

was in a straightjacket, I walked

through the Lower East Side

with my eyes on her. Following her

path, her moves, curious why she

was so ugly and forbidden.

She didn’t notice me.

Until, we turned a corner, and then she did.

And when she did, she made a snarling

demonic

face at me,

so scary I lost my lunch

my breath my pulse

for a split nothing second.

I took one look at her, once her eyes met mine,

and ran off in the other direction. That

night, I ran all the way home to Brooklyn.

Did not stop a second to notice how many

blocks passed me by. All I had in mind

was the insane woman

who bore

a truth that I was not ready to learn

about yet.

Twenty Euros

Heavy eyes, still masked with sleep,

dart open at three o’clock in the morning

today is Amsterdam, today is Amsterdam

baby went there, saved a little money,

few days for the big canal, that’s how the song goes.

So the eyes erupt with anticipation,

soon enough we’re on the road

cruising past trucks that honk to tomorrow

stop at a gas station, walk under a tunnel

with swastikas, a tunnel of death that is utterly

shit stained, toilet paper streaming the walls like

decorations on Christmas trees,

we drink coffee at La Place, all of us singing,

then it’s back under the tunnel that passes under the highway

and it makes us think of that 1950’s Irish gangster film noir

and I feel cultured and educated saying that it reminds me of that

and I feel that same way as I write it down here now

We return to the car and the car is bust,

what the fuck? Was it the Belgium guy who was brushing

his teeth with water bottle water and rotten toothpaste?

Maybe he thinks we’re German

and he doesn’t like Germans…

The car makes funny sounds,

I’m worried someone has put something near engine

but also I just watch too many movies,

don’t trust a living soul and tend to assume the worst

in people, but we manage to drive on, to Amsterdam

cause today is Amsterdam, today is Amsterdam,

baby went there for the canals and all that, yada yada,

we get to Amsterdam

and shit. The Rijks is jam packed with beautiful people

who do ugly things, who move in packs

and herds like animals

consuming art as if it is something to sustain them

but NOT in a good way,

they are posting said art on social media

and looking for trends to heighten their

social media presence.

It’s fucking disgusting.

And I feel dizzy

on the verge of hurling,

cause people can look so damn beautiful on the surface

have voices sweet like sugar hiccups but at the core,

be the rot of the gutter which is

this forsaken planet.

Rijks is underwhelming,

we go to Albert Heijn,

spend an arm and a leg on

snacks, then drive to the North Coast which is our haven.

We get there

and we’re searching for the auto mechanic to save us

“come back in one hour” he says

and we’re grinning cause we’ve reached our

destination, almost, and our car will be fixed in a hot a second.

We see holiday people with blonde hair and

sandy skin riding bikes to the dunes,

we walk along the street and decide to stop at an Italian restaurant.

It’s called La Grotta and immediately the waiter is pretty sketchy,

we get the food and it’s awful,

then some sketchy package exchange goes on with the waiter,

and this girl who sucks on an ice cream cone who is extremely thin,

looks 12 years old and is worried looking and then another guy,

with a shady license plate

who pulls up in a truck and

I feel like it’s a drug deal at first then realize

they are weighing and selling packages to send back to their home country.

We pay but Papa forgets to put down a twenty euro bill

to total it up to forty something

and some bald guy who is

speaking Italian, German, English, Russian to us all at the same time

points out that we’re twenty euros short and

I’m worried he’s gonna bust our knee caps

cause he has a gold chain around his neck and few teeth in his mouth…

But Papa puts it’s down then we’re free to go.

We pick up the car, we pay twenty euros for the fix up,

the laptops are still there (trust no one, ever)

and we ride to the coast to

where we’re staying,

we get there and damn… we can’t find the place.

The day is swirling, it’s an utter whirlwind,

it’s insane with high sun activity and

we’re all in a bad mood and we’re all in a good mood, too

cause we’re laughing at the hilarity of it all,

how things never go the way you expect them to go,

how life is stranger than fiction and all that crap.

But we finally find our place, and it’s nice and then we unpack,

go to the beach go to the restaurant (on the beach) shower sleep and

dream of something frightening.

But I sleep for 10 hours and

that’s the longest I’ve slept in months

so I wake up groggy with eyes heavy with dreams

but I’m grinning at life’s endless possibilities

and the anticipation of the rest of the week.

I’m happy.

Sucker Punch!

Sucker punch my soul,

at least when I’m in a bad way,

the words flow

and if the words flow

then the vitality is pulsating

and there is hope, yet.

For weeks, I grind my teeth

on a daily, and I cry, loud hot tears,

heavy and thick like Alice and

Wonderland sized bottles that

stand in contrast to a large Alice

and that hookah-smoking caterpillar

large tears, XL, US style, Jumbo-sized

for my large appetite that is perpetually

starved

and yes, I got that fugly word stuck into

my skin with a needle

it reads INSaitable and I had to check

many times the spelling was correct

and now I certainly wrote the word

broken

out of a lack of

of

something

I don’t know what

maybe you can tell me?

Well so, do you also grind your teeth?

And think of David Bowie, how his

eyes were different, and about Iggy Pop

the way his leather pants were so tight,

and for what?

To pack the bulge?

Please. The bulge is the center of

the universe and all-things phallic

have a place in mother eden’s

forsaken inferno-purgatory

which is the real paradise on earth.

And do your teeth hurt? With sores

and cuts, like that meth-head you see

on the bus, with the bulls-eye piercings,

sorry, I shouldn’t have put that image on

here and in your mind, and now I desperately

want it out of my mind, but she is unavoidable

and I see her often so I guess if I mention

her maybe the next time I see her I will be less affected.

But, does your jaw click like it’s been sucker-punched?

Mine does and has for many years now.

I wonder if it ever lets up. Let’s see