O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Mykyta Ryzhykh
leviathan
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
Winston Churchill
(Invocatio)
god of iron rivers,
bring to us like floodwood
your tangles of suffering and grief
bring to us your constitution and your plenary sessions of deputies
bring to us in torrents your new agendas to wash over us like mad cataracts
and like clouds of silt your mornings of emptiness, regret, futility, rage.
(Supplicatio)
my
friend my
brother my
son my
father my
reflection my
monster
I love you at sunset and at dawn.
At noon will I speak and declare
I love you, reverently, with every breath, with every prayer.
I vote for you in elections and without any choice
I die for you alone and in company at home and far away.
And still I don’t know who you are.
Exarchs of your iron altar oversee each blood sacrifice
but don’t resurrect anyone, don’t redeem anyone, don’t spare any of us the tithe of anguish,
and thus do I endlessly die
honored under your holy banner.
Where is our salvation? Where is our deliverance
from the many blessings of your
stateoperators and your
statechannels?
(Valedictio)
If someone wrote prose about this,
blood would drip like poetry.
As snowflake isotopes your divine offices will fall upon the city;
your sacraments will descend upon us like gasoline waterfalls.
Until the seventeenth day of some distant seventh month,
mountains of scrap metal will grow around us like rusting Ararats.
Your emissary will affix his seal of bitterness on hope and laughter.
Your iron commisioners will indoctrinate us in your own image.
Your iron marshals will conscript us all
(the knot of forced humility is already hung around our necks).
The god of iron rivers is coming,
the god of iron skies and his iron legions.
The iron god brings to us his covenant, a rainbow of fire.
Already our cups are running over.
About the writer:
Mykyta Ryzhykhis, a Pushcart Prize nominee, is a frequently published poet and writer from Ukraine. His work appears in Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Allegro Poetry Magazine, PLUM TREE TAVERN, Corvus Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Third Wednesday, among many others.
Image: Casualty of War (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via MidJourney AI.
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