Peter Burzynski

CONTACT:
peterburzynski@icloud.com           

BIO:
Peter Buzyński earned a PhD in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MFA in poetry from The New School, and an MA in Polish literature from Columbia University. Burzyński is the translator of Martyna Buliżańska’s This Is My Earth (New American Press, 2019) and the author of the chapbook A Year Alone inside of Woodland Pattern (Adjunct Press, 2022) as well as his debut full-length collection of poetry Infinite Zero (Writ Large Press, 2025).

Poetry

Slavophile

Your tears don’t impress me, Russia.
I have this grave image of you singing

to the bacon brown birds that flew over
the lids of your eyes. You were standing

tippietoed, Russia. I like that you have mud
beneath your nails. I like that you have mud.

I bought a new scythe on Tuesday,
but I’m not going to share it with you.

You taught my father numbers, Russia,
but you made him play with yarn.

I’m growing weary of excuses, Russia. You’re slow.
Don’t blame it on where you fell from the clouds

filled with soap and lye. Don’t blame it on the tsars,
you’ve been singing lullabies to their throne.

You’ve been a child, bullets boiled, cubed,
and bursting in a bag.

You’ve been a mother, churning the cud
spitting the beets and grain.

You’ve orchestrated your shell don’t say it’s heavy,
it’s filled with hay. I’ve buried potatoes with you

and tried to learn your game. Pawn to E-3, pawn
to save. I wish we could dig up all the pets we’ve lost.

Build them a palace. Their bones alabaster thin,
now candles to stave off the darkness of ghosts.

You’re a swine, Russia. You’ve eaten my bees
and I can’t have flowers without my bees.

—Originally published in RHINO Poetry

Fields of Flame


I’m tattered.

The droops
of my eyes
fold clumsy
over the crease
of my powder
blue mask
like old paper
waiting to die.

I look to the east
and the motors
of history
are ticking again—
humming
brass
coils
flick
with the electricity
of dominance.
“Murder is murder,”
says murder.

What neighbors
are neighbors?

A thousand years
of brother-shed.

And ever since
and ever after
our soils
mineralized
with the heavy iron
of common blood.

Somewhere caught
between the seas
a sack of stolen
potatoes spills out
and no one
has the mettle
to pick them up.

The sky blotted
with a regiment
of bundled flames.

Soon it’ll be time
to plant beetroot
again.

The borschts
we make
are almost as similar
as the tongues we use
to slurp them.

What will we harvest
this year when all we’ve
sown are bombs?


—Originally published in The Brooklyn Rail