The Fourth Astral Plane
(translated from the Russian by Olga Mexina)

We hastily left empty stores,
Army bullies,
Chernobyl,
Afghanistan,
Nagorno-Karabakh and
Happy drunkards snoring in the snow.
We were afraid that tomorrow the curtain would fall,
And the Czar will come back, or the dictator, or the terrorists,
So amidst the hot Brooklyn spring we came
To the Hasidim dressed in all black,
And to those who stay black even without clothes,
And we walked knee-deep in the snow
Around the Jewish cemetery
Arguing in hoarse voices about Berdyaev and Shestov,
And we ran away from dull rabbis,
Caring priests,
And Buddhists, annoying as flies,
But terrorists caught up with us,
And we choked coughing,
And covered our mouths
When New York swelled with asbestos dust
From the rotting twin corpses.
And in the snow desert by Chicago
We listened to the howling Tom Waits
And were irritated by the everlasting
And golden San Francisco fall.
We couldn’t bear it and ripped
The shirts off our backs.
And spending our last money
We ripped across the ocean, back to the East.
And in a London bar we listened
To the joking oligarch, “I drink only beer,
Where I can see the polonium better.”
And in the Berlin USSR bar
We opened the bathroom door
Decorated with a stolen authentic sign,
“Embassy of the Soviet Union.”
And when we landed in Sheremetyevo,
Boryspil and Pulkovo,
At the overloaded stores
On Nevsky, Arbat or Khreshchatyk,
The same happy drunkards long since frozen in the snow
With hardened eyes
Welcomed us.
And the Kiev salesgirl pretended
That she knew no Russian,
And the cops searched us and took our money
At the Novoslobodskaya metro.
And we kissed our sleeping bride on the forehead,
Sure that we will never see her again,
And early morning we left the cozy place
On Bolshoi Karetny.
We looked at the hiding armored troop-carriers,
And the OMON lines
Waiting in ambush for marchers,
And when the taxi driver asked, “Where to?”
We lingered and said, “To the Fourth Astral Plane.”



Click here to listen to Alex Galper reading "The Fourth Astral Plane"





Alex Galper was born in Kiev, Ukraine and has been writing poems and short stories since he can remember. Immigrating to America at the age of nineteen did not change that. To the contrary, majoring in Creative Writing at Brooklyn College and being mostly influenced by American poets created a fusion of Russian pessimism, Jewish humor, and Western literary traditions and philosophy. Translations of his poems have appeared in over thirty magazines in the US and the UK. In his homeland, he is considered a cult underground poet whereas mainstream Russian literary magazines ignore him for lack of respect for rhymes, heavy erotic imagery, and being "too American."







Olga Mexina is a poet, artist and translator born in St. Petersburg, Russia. When she was twelve years old, she moved to New York with her parents. She graduated from New York University with a B.A. in film and social sciences. She currently lives in New York and St. Petersburg.