dve propasti
I
dve propasti
(two abysses)
by Marko Emigrantov_na Kvirenko
Images by the author. Edited for publication by Verena.
The level of proximity they have had does not offer alternative scripts. They were everything or nothing completely. Tragic heroes laughing in the rye, catching the lines of random pop songs, flowing into each other. They went to sleep only when everybody was gone. Only when there was nobody else to save. They were never bored, and they never preserved themselves from meltdown. They existed only on the flip side of freedom, only on the cutting edge of the death drive, they were fabulous only in despair. It is unbearable that the life of one of them can get normalized. It is perceived as a treason. Will you abandon me? Will I leave first? Two wasted Peter Pans on the margins of the queer revolution.

II
revolutions are not happening half-awake
the system cannot be torched from above
our dances when there were ten of us
we are equals
“what would be a gender-neutral pronoun in your tongue?”
what can we reach with our tongue in these places?
there is a thunder
clutching the steely taste of the flu,
of the psychosomatic failures,
of the hasty decisions
of the non-consequent hate and love.
this is such a childish summer
as in 2006.
this is the penultimate trigger hitting my head into the snow
hitting the paddle into the freezing ocean
along the memory exactly there where
there is no pain?
intimacy is what making them anxious
to be not good enough
to be not here enough
to be too much
feeling of intimacy above the feeling of guilt and the feeling of debt
jumping you over, eradicating the former-you
with your drunken and rotten roots
from the endless fear
from the everyday terror into breathless long fearlessness
into the abyss of the possibilities of “yes”
there are some kind of waves
travelling from your hand into mine
we are some kind of a rhyme
we are calmness of a different way
we are an unexpected cosmos around the corner
an ocean between the lines
a calm inside of the unbearable thunder.

Markó Emigrántov_na Kvirénko was born in USSR, was moved 2004 to Germany at the age of 15 and is still moved by the topics of discrimination, social- gender- and other inequalities.
Shifting Traditions
Call for Submissions
DEADLINE: 30.12.2019
Whether you’ve stayed in the same place, but the political system, and family relations, or the climate changed around you, or whether you live with the memory of a place or situation you have left a long time ago or just yesterday – there are certain aspects of past and present within you or shared with the people around you that come together in harmony, struggle, or somehow don’t come together at all. They are traditions in transition.
The Cutter
The Cutter by AdibaImage provided by the author. Modified for publication by Verena.When I was eighteen, I was forced to roll dough every Saturday. A big circle of dough - thin enough to see the kitchen table’s fine grey cage pattern, or, as they say, “thin enough to...
Naa’hor Pa-at
by Chroma Chola // illustration by Marko Emigrantov_na Kvirenko /// A coffee cup lay on a stack of charts, its contents spiraling outwards. Computer screens nearby were beeping rapidly. One of the scientists picked up the coffee cup, emptied it in one gulp and wrote a report on his iPad.
an old tradition
by Julia Saragos // illustrations by Lena Dirscherl /// our last kiss
– fumbling and strange – in a spanish airport bathroom – she