moons on wax

unable to get what you 

want when you wanted it your 

eyelids fell over two waxed 

moons thankful for all 

you have

#katyamills

27

we were young we were trouble you

knew us by our answering machine messages 

we set fires in your faux fire

places   

#katyamills

still life

turtle green eyes stare wide off the back
of the couch strewn with catnip porous by hundreds of thousands 

of claws. fleck of tail. gnash of teeth

the red sun rising       #katyamills

end of policy

 the impoverished pride of a wannabe dictator

washed up on a foamy shore

edge of a landfall hurricane. the world wept

and shook a fist for the casualties 

of careless policy    #katyamills

Book Review: Nabokov's Luzhin Defense

 The Luzhin Defense

by 

Vladimir Nabokov,

 

Michael Scammell (Translator)

Katya Mills's review

Oct 27, 2020  ·  edit

liked it

It took me 9 months to finish this book but that's not terribly unusual. Anything written by a master like Nabokov can be taken up like a special chocolate your traveling cousin brought you from overseas, kept in the freezer and partaken once in a while for an instant of exceptional flavor. I would only read 5 pages at a sitting and I had other books and magazines vying for attention. Nabokov's writing style will never disappoint a careful reader, unless perhaps the translation is weak (and you're not likely to come across that problem if you live in an English, German, or Russian-speaking land, for he lived in many countries and translated his own work). The story revolves around a boy who takes up chess and becomes obsessed by the game, easily chosen over a community of peers who have little to offer and mostly pick on him for his appearance and demeanor. There is an obvious antagonist in Valentinov who takes Luzhin around to coffeehouses in great cities around the world, setting up matches, promoting him widely and checking him into hotels and pulling him by the collar without any heart for how he may feel about his insular life as a budding chess master. Valentinov reminded me of Elvis infamous 'doctor' always in recess with his bag full of 'medication'. Luzhin naturally decompensates under the rigors of traveling and the hyper focused spotlight of competition, performance, and obsession with the game. You could call his nervous breakdown the Luzhin 'Defense' as it ultimately acts as a defense mechanism to protect his ego from being swallowed whole in this world. The remainder of the novel is reminiscent of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (another book I am reading very slowly lol) as both protagonists are half-baked moving about with watchful eyes of worried loved ones. Line by line I certainly wasn't feeling drawn into the 'suspense'. This was a character driven book. Clearly not one of Nabokov's most popular. It is a touching study of what it must feel like to exist inside the mind and heart of a man who was fated to play the part of a pawn on the chess board of life.

cold 2 hot

hot to cold you turned so

quickly i wondered what 

i did. turns out your turning

cold then hot then cold

was mood seasonal and

by consensus often

inexplicable

#katyamills

play 2 win

goth girl 

off work 

threw her apron in the bin 

hit the bodega

voted blue

a dream play to win

#katyamills

pacman

 a kid of the eighties i

was there when the first computers 

came home. color graphics

with sound effects. joystick some

second dimension golden cheese wheel

floating through a maze swallowing 

ghosts

#katyamills

classix

when the storms of life strike the 

rains the heavy winds we bundle up

and hunker down. i was spinning classics 

for days calling out with the chorus

like forty years ago was only

yesterday

#katyamills

woke

i cried falling asleep i 

could not stop waking up then a bit of a drought

lots of effort in several directions i

really wanted to live to
make the most of the strange time 

on earth. i never fell asleep

again

#katyamills

pain receding

you was down and out 

unable to do much of anything you 

saw how difficult the world 

can be. you called your last friend they 

gave you an idea. reluctantly you stepped out into the sunlight 

cursing your friend and 

yourself...then...the pain

receding

#katyamills

tbh #8

no method 

can rival a letter 

written by hand

describing the thoughts the 

feelings to convey

you truly care

much less effective

to be honest 

when you fail to 

drop said letter in

the mail

#katyamills

 

halloween

the method 

unconventional

practiced 

relentlessly within

a wave of sound

from dusk to dawn

a chorus of frogs

water.fire.earth.air

the eye of a

full moon

#katyamills

cobalt

on my morning walk to seven

eleven for coffee i heard a single bird

watched the light come into the sky

two women held one another

crying by the petrol station

a cat with a collar on a line wrapped round

a man austere by the fence

cobalt eyes 

#katyamills

tbh #7

to be honest this

can happen to anyone the loss 

of direction sometimes you

gotta pray for guidance

believe in yourself!

there's nothing you cannot 

overcome

#katyamills

butane hill

alone i faced the wind

above the trees blowing

in my hands sheltering the

laughing blue life of

fire

#katyamills

i.vote

vote for the one who speaks from the heart

who has had hardship

overcome it

who realizes violence and madness

are contextual who did not come out of

nowhere. vote for the one who is

not destructive but

creative




#katyamills

7am

7am. getting numb where

the drills will commence the battle 

of the teeth. the sky 

orange like novocaine

painted on gums oh 

what fun. getting

numb

#katyamills

flower. papiere

the petals turn colorful pirouettes

pinwheels for narrow pupils having a moment

under careless of cashier judgment unspoken

ultra premium violet exposition

1999. like midnight sun was a tradition

#katyamills

tbh #6

some truths 

are too painful. i dispel

them with ice cream 

and books

#katyamills

1903

an army nurse out of shiloh
tennessee found herself deep
in the hornet's nest. after the war
came west. the sunken road
prominent in her nightmares
the men bloody and dying
gasping unable to speak she
could not turn away her 

stone is simple she passed 

in 1903

#katyamills

tbh #5

life has come together in the last decade. all that i have learned has come to use in some way. to be honest it's been a long journey. i struggled for years with identity, mental illness, addiction. never stopped writing. working on my 6th book of fiction. my author page is here: https://www.amazon.com/Katya-Mills/e/B00F5DWHGC 

tbh #4

to be honest i pressure cooked
an artichoke i stole from
your garden. drizzled oil
with garlic squeezed upon
the heart i cut out for you

all u ever learn comes to use

some way some

how



#katyamills

tbh #3

 to be honest the laboratory 

curiosity has filled 

with experiments will

be trashed the day subject

becomes object

#katyamills

bull

gave my towel coded

red to the wind to be 

honest the sun 

is a bull

#katyamills

tbh #2

To be honest i cannot know 

your heart your mind and though

your words your actions confuse

and vex me upset and perplex

me i can only be who god

made me and do the best 

i can. 

#katyamills

recipro.city

in this our post-industrial society

how loving to skip the math to give 

your attention undivided. how 

grateful we are for wholeness 

like an apple like

an egg

unless one holds the deficit hyper

active or otherwise multi 

tasked. we understand one

cannot undivide 

it!

#katyamills

tbh. scratch

 to be honest i 

beat myself into a hopeless 

frame of mind 

no matter how down i

get relentless i

get back to work i

believe 

#katyamills

mood.Q

my mood was Q a big wide

open with a kick stand wants

to roll. like dynamite 

set off at sunset ina pumice 

equilibrium

#katyamills

into the cellular memory

she concocted a potion for the full

harvest moon. diatomaceous earth

stirred with baking soda

and water. to convey the spirit 40 million years

back when all cellular life was more

or less collaboratively 

symphonic

#katyamills

di.atom

a diatom i befriended

passed away and willed his remains

in a letter. i mixed a teaspoon

with water and planted myself

by the root of the bonsai

to activate our silica

reverie

#katyamills