New fiction/translation from NER 39.2
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from Ings & Oughts
Translated from the Russian by Elina Alter

A teacher of literature, a highly spiritual lady, had a husband who was an alcoholic. One day her friend told her: I know this one woman, a psychic, go see her, maybe she can help. So, the literature teacher takes her sad salary and goes to see the psychic. She tells her: so and so, my husband drinks, can you do something. The psychic looks at a photo of the husband and says: he doesn’t have a soul. How’s that? asks the frightened literature teacher. No soul, that’s how, says the psychic. Biomass.  [Read more]

 

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Alla Gorbunova, born in Leningrad in 1985, is a poet, prose writer, translator, and critic. She has published five books of poetry and one book of short prose, and her work has been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Latvian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Czech.

Elina Alter is a writer and translator in New York. Her work has appeared in BOMB, Paris Review Daily, Modern Poetry in Translation, Guernica, Slice, Brooklyn Magazine, and Southeast Review. She is the editor of Circumference: Poetry in Translation.