When a Soviet state official attempts to coerce a celebrated poet into apologizing for a political joke he made, the official gets a taste of his own predatory medicine at the hand of the poet's vengeful wife.

A heartbroken man remembers his ex-lover while reading about the dramatic end to the relationship between two famous poets and listening to his favorite musician.

In the early 1970s, a listless radical must decide what to do with his life as his social circle of grassroots activists dwindles.

In 1990s Leningrad, a Russian man prepares to emigrate, but things don't quite go as planned—twists of fate, complex friendships, and the omnipresent KGB stand in his way.

A young would-be poet develops a complicated relationship with the most famous living Bosnian poet at the time. This relationship ends decades later on another continent when that poet dies, and the young man finds a life of his own that doesn't involve poetry.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, a Russian man studying in the United States reconnects with his estranged, ludicrously Communist grandfather. Through letters, phone calls, and eBay, they bond over their shared experiences with death and Soviet life.

A woman reflects on a day — back when she was a young poet in 1972 New York City — she spent retrieving furniture to borrow from a young man about to visit his home in Chile. The man was eventually taken by the secret police, leaving the woman with his furniture for years to come.

Curious about a poet incarcerated for horrible crimes, a woman tries to get closer to poetry—and to him.

As conflict rages between Russia and Ukraine, a woman struggles to get through to her friend caught in the middle of it.

In a dystopian future dominated by technology, a man is ejected from his orgynism—a mass of sedated human bodies connected for their own sexual pleasure. Without that blissful oblivion, the man is left to wander what is left of his city.