Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. She is the author of the poetry collections Factory of Tears and Collected Body (both published by Copper Canyon Press). She is also the editor of the anthology Something Indecent: Poems Recommended by Eastern European Poets (2013). A recipient of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship, Mort is a visiting assistant professor at Cornell University.

Photograph by Doug Barber.

Belarusian I

by Valzhyna Mort

even our mothers have no idea how we

were born

how we parted their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl from the ruins after a bombing
we couldn’t tell which of us was a girl or a boy
we gorged on dirt thinking it was bread
and our future
a gymnast on a thin thread of the horizon
was performing there
at the highest pitch
bitch
People on couch
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