"A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world." - Susan Sontag

Ertoba Magazine

ერთობა

-unity-

Inaugural Edition

Spring 2026

A new platform to celebrate Georgian-American voices & friends of Georgia

DAUGHTER OF DIASPORA, MAYBE

a golden shovel poem

after Raise Your Glass by Philip Metres

“to the borderland between our lives & the dream of our lives”

i talk to our pruned peach tree sometimes. the memorial to Grandpa Anatoly. whisper to

its bare branches: ancestors, can you hear me? i’m sorry i let you down. AGAIN. & the

silence grows & my fear waxes like the moon, my liminal love. we are the borderland

that exists in perpetuity & without answers & b e t w e e n

inheritances. back in Brighton Beach, Grandmother wags her finger, says our

legacy rests on me & my rusting {x}, but what language freely moves, freely lives—

and what language wilts without water? so i begin with დედა ენა and learn აი ია &

the first word i fall for: ზღაპარი. fairytale. fantasy i speak fluently & then i dig up the

familial archives that whisper secrets of forgotten folk songs. Anchiskhati Choir. dream

of their voices. dream of the past. raise my empty glass: see reflections of

all diaspora children who wander & wonder about their footsteps in the world. our

homes? we make them between and beyond, in these short, shapeshifting lives.

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