Tag Archives: Mythology

TATI’S TRANSLATIONS // Young Ukrainian Poets: Kateryna Dashevets

Dear Readers, today we present to you the last instalment of our Young Ukrainian Poets feature. We like to believe that over time you have fallen in love with this and have therefore waited for each new post with crippling anticipation. After all, your likes and comments speak for themselves. (Our warmest wishes to Dolly whose comments especially inspired us to keep going!)

It was a fresh new breeze, our feature on young Ukrainian poets, don’t you think? Well, young, but never naïve. The war has changed the lives of all Ukrainians with one terrible, galvanising flick. The ones who yesterday enjoyed life, their first love, their first taste of booze and their first joint, are soldiers today. Our young Ukrainians took up arms and went to war to protect their Motherland from the imperialist fantasies of their crazy neighbouring lunatics. Why? To prove their right to be Ukrainians. To prove their right to simply be.

So, it is the end. But it is also the beginning. We will meet more of them soon, our young Ukrainian poets, in a new feature on unbolt.me. Stay tuned for that, won’t you?

Grecian free verse

After the divorce Hera escaped for a retreat at Argos
Swim in youthful springs, restore thoughts their chastity
Lay on an old sunbed to other women’s splashing
Who were waiting for therapeutic muds
Hiding behind sunglasses
From their housemaids
Hera thought gosh how long ago
My lands weren’t watered with bounteous and heavy rainfall
How long weren’t they fed with heat lightnings, fresh and steady winds didn’t rush
This jackass could only
Turn into a cuckoo
And grope my ass by surprise
He skimped on thunder and lightning for me
Like I skimp on mud for those hens
Quietness is broken with the clank of utensils
The clamour and laugh of soaked guests, eaten by siesta
The sacred bath is being readied for Friday’s party
Somewhere in the west of nature, away from the all-inclusive fuss
Sipping the late sun, like tequila sunrise, under the apple tree
Reclining, Zeus chills
Zeus eats ripe apples
Because this, maybe, is the only thing Hera hasn’t yet found, that he has snaffled
From the list of jointly acquired stuff
In their thousand-year marriage
And Zeus thought of course that he’s a fool and goof
How he skimped on lightning for his woman, how he scrimped on rainfall and spared the thunder
So she fed him with silence
For breakfast lunch but not for dinner
Because before their sleep they feasted with the heaviest concrete tedium
That wasn’t eaten up by erosion
Of the thousand-year Olympic marriage
Well everything’s alright Zeus snorted in his moustache
The real Hera is as she shall be
Loves violently
The Sun is down, and Zeus targets it with an apple core, like the needle of a dart
Getting 50 points, he wins and turns into a cuckoo
And flies to Argos

Давньогрецький верлібр

Після розлучення Гера втекла на ретрит до Аргоса
Скупатися у струмках молодості, повернути думкам незайманість
Лежати на старому топчані під хлюпотіння інших жінок
Які очікували лікувальних грязей
Ховатись за темними окулярами
Від своїх покоївок
Гера думала господи як же давно
Мої землі не зрошувалися щедрою й сильною зливою
Як довго не частувались вони блискавицями, як не гуляли свіжі й стійкі вітри
Він тільки й умів цей телепень
Що перекидуватись зозулею
Й хапати за дупу мене зненацька
Він для мене жалів гріму й блискавки
Як я жалію для тьоток багнюки
Тишу порушує брязкіт начиння
Гомін і сміх змоклих гостей, з’їдених сієстою
Священна купальня готується до п’ятничної вечірки
Десь на природі на заході, далеко від метушні олл-інклюзивів
Ковтаючи пізнє сонце, наче текілу санрайз, під яблунею
Напівлежачи, чілить Зевс
Зевс їсть наливні яблука
Бо це, напевно, єдине, до чого Гера не ще знає, що він дібрався
Зі списку нажитого спільно
У цьому тисячолітньому шлюбі
І Зевс звісно ж думав який він дурак і лох
Як він шкодував блискавиць для своєї жінки, як жалів розливних дощів і скупився на грім
От вона й годувала його мовчанням
На сніданок обід тільки не на вечерю
Бо перед сном вони споживали важкезну бетонну втому
Яку не роз’їла ерозія
Тисячолітнього олімпійського шлюбу
Ну все правильно засміявся собі в вуса Зевс
Гера вона така
Любить жостко
Сонце заходить, і Зевс цілить у нього огризком, як дротиком в дартсі
Вибиваючи 50 очків, він виграє й перекидується зозулею
І летить на Аргос

Original poem by KATERYNA DASHEVETS
Translation by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2025

kiss the frog (and see what happens)

a mermaid reads a fairy tale
and snorts, ‘do dragons really exist?’
while behind her a dragon frolics
it even does a belly flop into the sea

an elf watches a fantasy series
and giggles, ‘the undead are so stupid!’
while behind her a gaggle of undead
prepare for their final university exam

a vampire picks a halloween costume
she wants something silly like a fairy
while behind her a fairy tries a shiny mermaid tail on
and pities the fact that mermaids don’t really exist

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

ACROSTIC POETRY // Droid Avunculate

Uncle, tell me a bedtime story!
Promise me sleep right after that?

Bearded myths say there’s a purgatory
Right after death, right after begat.
Its goddamned inmates are forever doomed to
Never succeed in finding ease of breath,
Getting sick with chronic, emotional flu,
Insides torn ‘tween flame life and ice death.

No way, Iron Uncle, do they still have human pith!
Godspeed, Tiny Tin. People are just a silly ancient myth.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018

Oops!… We Did It Again (cease fire)

Erm… hullo there. (This is rather awkward…)

Dear Reader, the stuff that was originally posted here has been removed.

We have done this because said stuff has since been included in one of our published books. We hope you’ll believe us when we say we’re not trying to be stingy. No, this has been done to honour the people who have already spent their hard-earned money on our eBook creations.*

If, however, for some reason you’re unable to buy one of our books, and feel you’ll die without seeing this piece of writing, then please contact us via admin@unbolt.me. We won’t allow our Dear Readers to fade away in the dark. We’ll send you the piece in question, and it will be absolutely free. All you need do is ask.

* Of course, we would be like two happy puppies if you too decided to buy one of our books.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018

Eros & Psyche

Just a quarter of an inch across and I’d have been pulling up daisies. Eros is packing some serious heat these days, a fact to which the hole in my living room wall attests. I’m standing here with two fingers inserted, noting the rough edges. Not quite as smooth as one would expect, yet so typical of a god really. Always demanding more than they can give. Always getting more than they deserve. Well, not from me. I refuse to pay him any attention. I withdraw to the bathroom to wash the white residue off my hands.

My mind drifts back to when we were fledglings. All Eros had in those days was a dinky little slingshot from which to fire his pixie skulls. We’d fossick for their wingless remains at the foot of the royal mosaics at Latium, right there on the beach alongside the unsuspecting sunbathers who would soon become our targets. Eros would rattle off a round or two as I egged him on and then, grin faced, we’d retreat to the rock pools before they could track our trajectory.

He was a brat and I was a chit, and there was a time when I would have sworn that we were made for each other. Not any more though. Eros is a fucking anal fissure and I’m righteously pissed off. That tends to happen when your heart has been so carelessly stomped on. For someone who prides himself on being the ultimate matchmaking machine, Eros sure was sucky at keeping our own relationship off of life support.

That hole. It’s bigger than it has any right to be. What the hell is he using? More than pixie skulls, that’s for goddamn sure. By junior high, he’d graduated to a compound crossbow with customised arrows sporting a filigree, heart-shaped tip motif. Who knows what Eros has moved on to since then? A Gustav Gun perhaps? With nuke sized dildos? No. The hole is big, but not that big.

Whichever way I choose to look at it, it’s obvious he wants me back. Eros has always been one to big things up, to over compensate in his declarations of love. Ugh. I really want to hate the bastard. Some days, I even succeed.

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2017