I cannot have sex without
the sky inside me. My blood
is turning blue, even
when it spills. I have become
an ocean all the men dip into.
Scent of jasmine, only
bluer. New promiscuous stone.
All night I writhe
in the hands of an eagle,
lose a little bit more of my fear.
Fear not. This balsam
allows me to suffer again tomorrow.
Take the pleasure
of an adversary in my mouth
and swallow the lathe of blue.
I will not acquire
any new history.
O, what preternatural wonder!—
my body at the helm of discovery.
Mountains worthless
against this panacea
the rim of my desire.
They can’t even block out the sky.
There are many ways to measure worth,
and mine is blue. Thick ichor.
What runs down the valley,
first comes from the sky—
all the hues of water.
And only one may keep me alive.
Examine the fine machine
of my body, survive
all the men and their blood.                 

Ryan Dzelzkalns has poems appearing with Assaracus, DIAGRAM, The Offing, The Shanghai Literary Review, Tin House, and others. He received an MFA from New York University and a BA from Macalester College where he was awarded the Wendy Parrish Poetry Prize. He has worked for the Academy of American Poets and is currently a Fulbright scholar in Tokyo. Read more at RyanDz.com

Arkhip Kuindzhi is considered one of the most talented Russian landscape painters of his generation. Born in Ukraine, he was associated during the second half of the 1870s with a group of Russian Realist painters known as the Wanderers. In the 1890s, he was hired to teach landscape painting at the Academy of Fine Arts but was later dismissed for sympathizing with student agitators. He ultimately founded his own painting society.