Nikita Nelin

Story Weaver

Fiction.

Nonfiction..

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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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03/28/20 Fraying Lines

April 02, 2020 / Nikita Nelin

Let me feel grateful for the solitude,

but there are those who can’t rest;

let me worship peace with an alarm clock set on snooze indefinitely,

but everyday another worker screams, naked in neglect;

let me write my little words

like there’s meaning in abstraction,

myth,

metaphor,

but the front lines are far, far out there

where the rest of us can’t reach;

let me dance party in the kitchen,

but there are billions crying;

let me ponder the river,

but an orange clown rages with deceit;

let me water my garden,

a homeless thief suffers in an alley

with a last duty;

let me contemplate which greens to sauté,

but I know someone, somewhere starves their love.

Good, bad;

wrong, right;

I cannot engineer a solution

– this is a mutual tide –

we are adrift, billions of little rafts,

tied together;

take care to check the fraying of your lines

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