Nadya Tolokonnikova

by: , November 19, 2024

© Screenshot from Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (2013) dir. Mike Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin

father thinks pussy riot 

music is gówno 

punk rock didn’t speak

to him he didn’t fight

communism he benefited

preferring the orphanage

to family – Vysotsky playing

on tape deck of 82

pontiac lemans 5

o’clock shadow fred flintstone

I was the soul of a bad company

do not confuse him 

with his characters

Baryshnikov dances to horses

with Gregory Peck rolling his r(s)

enunciating consonants

performing to the west 

defectors have their own truth

monument likelier erected 

for an actor who never knew 

loneliness of prison walls 

it’s some sort of crime

to not be a bob dylan fan

rear view mirror tree 

poisoned after bob’s

big boy juvenile delinquent

boot camp 20 years later

he’s still telling me

I need to follow the rules

but I know what it’s like

to be poisoned father

 

Notes

On 17 August 2012, Nadya Tolokonnikova was arrested for ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’ after a performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow and was ultimately sentenced to two years of imprisonment.

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