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 http://offcourse.org
 ISSN 1556-4975

OffCourse Literary Journal

 Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998


 

A collection of short texts by Kirill Azernyy

The blunt

In the morning I wake up in a customary room with a window blind with whiteness and, one by one, sad little scars of rain appear on it. This blunt unnecessary violence seems symptomatic to me. What mourned they - our born in silence incesters giving terms in their restricted ring of enlightenment in this time of day? Which is, I would like to note, not even a day yet - only a problematic precedent that takes away all revelations of night. Or worse - replace them with different revelations. They already knew that rising does not necessarily means roses, is not given in perfection, for what perfection needs eternity to be established from one catastrophic failure of night to another? There is always a mine of doubt in each triumphal shining of day, however hard it tries to involve versions of darkness in long list of its meanings, blinding with polysemantic I, causing tears of no application. They knew rose as something external, disconnected from their never crossed bloodlines - the possibility of disclamation, of sons lost in complete darkness of dreams - among the diamonds settled between two days, two concepts of a one day which itself shines with its completeness. Sinners with their songs, they all knew that at the moment of honesty they would have nothing to tell. 

      

A delayed answer

Later (lat.: sort of clay, seen from each side) something delivered a massage from the upcoming, and I started to decode it with all my knowledge of the past, so I discovered that past was the residence of my knowledge (among other things) - as love, which makes all itself; fire moves from one subject to another while the mark of it becomes the subject, yet the memory is different, for its source is present, not past: predicted, previously seen (precedent). In French, pas is negation (there's nothing), passed is given to some who does know what to do with it, the forever is established. Look for the mirror: cool outfit of departure, you always look as if you were about to leave. Merely a matter of time passed - the origin of personality... should it be applied elsewhere, where the outside belongs to insight, the outlook of reflection? The runaway towards the fence (to fancy) - it is not heart, yet it breaks like heart does (it is sound), I knew the point, I put it there. The benefit of the one cited where my eyes reach without hope - it takes advantage of the known (none taken) - the light meaning matches the letters, like fingers match themselves, with no point in it, without reason or purpose. Who is saved in that transparent pond of reflection? How much time is there?
            I am.  

 

Goodbye to the door and the window.

            Sitting where I belong, no thing could bear the mind forest on the sight's very bottom (where it belongs); it should not be seen from where it's sitting (naturally), but now. The archive is overwhelming: looking for its end (waiting), looking for room. Eyes are East: luck (fortune) for the house with no eyes (no is number). To switch off the light, look into one's window with your own eyes (won't believe till I see it), make sure it's empty. I think I saw something, moving. Sight is a move towards the door. The door and the window - they both are crossed, like fingers (are crosses). Waiting, then, but waiting - before the facade of the left and the leaving room of more (no more), weight-back. I knock at my own door.

Outside and the suicide are getting to know each other: the movement towards itself (note: not) is made from itself. Written on my name (above) - the not of my and the other, the silver linen of the other hand. The left and the written are getting together to make sure that my message is clear: not is number. 

  

Sheet music

Siblings of a summer - the triangle's form the square; the listener's attribution - to think about the passive cross - I'm counting on the birds' whisper with their returning letters to fly, to be, to the plain and the faces of sleepers before the night - the knitting gulls are dam and death, the wall before the sound of grass and the interrupted interrogation of the voice - how far is the replica of reply? I would give the original instead of the copy - I won't wait until the sun appears, hiding between the sirs and madams (lost in indications). The glistening surface is covered with moon's saliva - the day's silence is golden: those are the visibles, and they have no names, but lost in the list of counters as if in woods. That (this) fear of finding your own name - to be misspelled. To be misplayed - by the tunes of tenants, to hear on the grapevine - the heard on the grapevine, to lie below the repetition.

No repetition, then.  

  

The teller

When a spark comes and leaves burn with all their recollection, I mingle and don't try to get involved into the routine of tellers thrown away as if and am the first and foremost gardener of light mothers. Taller than the stars counted without numbers, I grasp the fair light's memory with the other hand. If sees both sides of the taken and takes both of them. The "to" of the betrayals - to see and to take - are separate: the punishment of lovers is to be. Come and see the beginning (the scenery is dull) - I am to say a few words to the few of us about the few - with each stair the subject becomes tinier - and yet I'm interrupted: who leaves the circle? The blinded is seen, but unreachable - out of order, got to business, shown. Unable to remember the one that is around (the circle): my memory runs into objects and becomes objective - the report, it never reaches the higher instance and is constantly neglected: back to the continuation - instead of the general finish of the things, among the campers the residents are sleepless. 

     

Upon the looker

Like if something was there when I came in without knowing - as a knowing of some particular world which I present as warning: forest without trees, land without deads, sky with no idea of itself. I'm only giving what I have. In childhood we were asked to draw what we wanted for the coming winter, and the paper stared at me as if distracted, and as if I was all around its taken place: sleepless whites of suns and siblings - the surroundings always covered their papers in the way that no white color presented after.

Normally, I wanted snow to come upon my daily papers, to cover them with whiteness and there's also cold - I don't know, eyes don't feel the time of year, empty dishes of the light flakes if we remember... even when the day is full of said and happened, I still wait for the other to come, though what comes is waiting. I already have it: the white color of cold, the want of will, the sight of pity that comes down on the looker and the tiny house in the middle of a window.   
 


Kirill Timurovich Azernyy (sometimes spelled Azernyi) was born in 1990 in USSR, Sverdlovsk. Has been writing fiction since 2005; his stories and short stories have been published in literary magazines in Russia, such as "Novyi Mir", "Ural", "Vesch", "Guideon", etc. A story has been long-listed for the Debut award (2015) and one in Gone Lawn magazine (July 2017) Participant of the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa (2015). Teacher of English. Student (Postgraduate) of Philosophical Department of Ural Federal University. Lives in Russia, Yekaterinburg.



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