Yana Kane

‍ ‍

Now You

How do I tune into the faint voice
that struggles to cross the void?
How do I restore meaning
to the scattered words of a far-away language
that arrive fevered with urgency and exhaustion,
having lost companions 
in the explosions of noise,
in the pools of dead silence?

               great darkness 
swarms   
we                        uprooted   

gone                     
‍ ‍gone                                     
‍ ‍gone

‍ ‍we     still standing   
‍ ‍refuse to      
                 not
                      hope

now you       us
‍ ‍to search
‍ ‍to           light
‍ ‍to           rainbow
‍ ‍fragments            together

‍ ‍will you      yes

I want to know. 
I want to find my way to yes.

Yana Kane’s poetry, essays, stories, and translations have appeared in literary magazines, including The Arkansas International, Literary Review, Rattle, RHINO, The Inflectionist Review, World Literature Today, and World Poetry Review. Her work has appeared in anthologies, including “Dislocation” (Slavica Publishers, Indiana University, 2024) and “Best Literary Translations” (Deep Vellum, 2025). She won the 2024 RHINO Poetry Translation Prize and was a finalist for the 2025 Gabo Prize. A book of her translations of Ukrainian poet Dmitry Blizniuk, "My Fish Will Stay Alive," is forthcoming from Serving House Books. She came to the United States as a refugee from the Soviet Union. She holds a BSE from Princeton University, a PhD in Statistics from Cornell University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University.