Two Poems by Jenya Doudareva

Tightly Packed Sardines

Forget the niceties
And note the following:

While you are tightly packed
Like sardines in a can,

Witnessing the gradual
(But sure) disintegration

Of one another’s faces,
You don’t stop for a second

To recall what it was like
To realize that you’re caught.

Which makes sense because you’re not
The one steering this piece of…

But rather are taken
To the only logical

Resolution. Of course
Such is the mechanism.

---

Amygdala

One of the rare things I miss
About the old place
Is the smell of frost at nights.
Crisp like an apple,
Pinching your cheeks like an aunt you barely know
While you’re standing there,
Little,
Snotty,
Sticky-fingered,
Confused,
Staring up at her,
Wondering if you’ll ever grow to be just as big.

That smell isn’t the same here,
I suppose it gets carried away by the winds
Before it has a chance to leave a fingerprint.

They say smells are very effective
At inducing memories:

A vaguely familiar scent of wet clay
Can bring you to tears over someone well-forgotten,

Stale perfume has the capacity to
Remind you of rolling your eyes
At your grandmother’s relationship advice.

That’s why I like it here,
Where the wind doesn’t let the smells linger.

---

about the author:

Jenya Doudareva likes precision, which is why she is both a poet and an engineer. This is her first poetry publication, however she has published a paper on algorithms for safe irradiation of brain tumours. Jenya works in healthcare and is an editor for Weird Canada, a blog that celebrates DIY and grassroots Canadian art. She welcomes robot apocalypse. Some of her work can be found here.