Nikita Nelin

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The Obligatory Bio in the 3rd-person:

Nikita Nelin was born in Moscow, Russia and immigrated to the U.S in 1989. He has lived in Austria and Italy, and has traveled the U.S extensively. He received the Sean O’Faolain prize for short fiction, the Summer Literary Seminars prize for nonfiction, and the Dogwood Literary Prize in Nonfiction, as well as being chosen as a finalist for the Restless Books Immigrant prize and the Dzanc Books prize. His work has been published in print and online. Nikita has conducted research through the Harriman Institute as well as translation through Yale Press, and has written on the convergence between fringe and at-large cultural trends for the Hannah Arendt Center. He holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, is a 2019 Associate Fellow at The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, and is a member of the Southern Experience Collective.

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04/10/20 Charlatan

April 10, 2020 / Nikita Nelin

There are days I can

smell the ozone

on my shirts

after pulling them off

the sun rack,

haphazardly,

on my way to another appointment

where no one brought a pen

and the handshakes grin with disaster

while time takes another

unclaimed piece of the pie

and

know

I’m dying.

There are days like that.

A better poet would find a charming way to tell you

you are under no obligation to count them,

or better yet,

do,

but know there is no one keeping the meter.

Hm…

Why would I burn an image

simply for spilling its secrets?

I’m not that charming anyway;

just a charlatan

dancing to an already broken song,

a solar flare from a long dead star,

and a mutable message

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