Svetlana Litvinchuk
How to Find Identity on a Map
2.
you don’t look non-American,
I’ve been told,
an intended compliment
but then there are others who say,
no, it’s something in the eyes,
something foreign about you
4.
before the war, most couldn’t find
my homeland on a map,
my childhood ringing exotic,
faintly scented of dill and pickled herring
before the war people used to ask,
that’s somewhere in Russia, right?
but they no longer ask this
now they want to know
why brother kills brother
while claiming family as the reason
for the bloodshed
6.
after all this time, the Slav
in me still comes out when
I’m too angry for words
and my tongue trips over
my v’s and w’s
like when I stumble over simple
phrases like:
the war will end very soon
8.
why doesn’t anybody ever smile
at strangers anymore?
maybe if we did, life
wouldn’t be one
neverending drone war
a parallel universe of war
expands like a tumor
feeding on our otherness
10.
my finger can trace the red
and recall a time
when there was no need
for slaughter to nourish our hunger,only the wound in the Earth
left gaping after the harvest
1.
a man once said to me of drawing: always start
with the eyes because if you get the eyes wrong
there is no point in continuing
so, with everyone I meet I make sure
to start with the eyes and sure enough,
I never get it wrong
3.
the word you’re searching for
is eurotrash
another way of lumping Eastern
European together and tossing it
into the cultural junk drawer
to twist itself into knots
5.
today people know of
my homeland
the way they know of
Bosnia
7.
after all this time, the Ukrainian
in me comes out in the way my lips
forget to smile in photographs
the way I recall
how no one back home ever smiles
for cameras
or machines
or bombs
9.
maybe it’s the way I cook beets
into every dish—
a way of staying close
to my roots
while admiring
how no one had to die
for this blood on my plate
Svetlana Litvinchuk is the author of Navigating the Hallways by Starlight (Fernwood Press, 2026). Her poetry has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Rhysling Awards. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Pleiades, New Orleans Review, swamp pink, Redivider, Moon City Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lake Effect, and elsewhere. Her essays and stories have appeared in ONLY POEMS, Astrolabe, Plant-Human Quarterly, Apocalypse Confidential, and elsewhere. She is the Events Director for Chill Subs and a columnist for Sub Club. Originally from Ukraine, she currently tends her garden in Missouri. Her work engages with themes of immigrant identity, feminism, ecology, climate grief, motherhood, and family relationships. Find her on Instagram @s.litvinchuk or at www.svetlanalitvinchuk.com.