A crack is stained with the fog that begins on the plain.
The green of the curved jade grants transparency but also denies it:
leaves of thick dye, aroma that descends
clamoring at this somewhat empty start, condemned
from dye to aroma, peach that coats […]
The nun, Sister Hui, was very mysterious.
No one knew her family, or if she had one. No one knew whether she’d been raised rich or poor, educated or uneducated, in a village or in the capital city […]
The Clay of Time has Grown Soft The clay of time has grown soft. The kneading of sunset after sunset has made it rise. A tiny grain of sand has suddenly split open in a dream to dispel a mystery, and only the owl weeps from a silver lock of tangled hair. The dead have […]
[bilingual poetry] The first cable-car ride brings him before tourists, far above the daily concerns, where a trail climbs and winds in the shades of ancient woods. A trunk and moss can be heard, but many a tree leaf is gasping, when the largest deer on earth stops at six yards, watching. From top to […]
[translated poetry] I drank coffee with your devastated parents or something we called coffee: were you already different when we sat across from each other in my kitchen and you didn’t want to eat anything except a piece of chocolate, did you already have an eye on the reeds? I can’t tell .. was that […]
[translated poetry] He was the same as other people who know nothing about the white gray glass: about the flat drop of sameness in a frame of white-lacquered window like a gray block of longing lying in a day rectangle of colored dough of encounters. He has installed the window panes in a […]
[translated fiction] “The wolf tone is a musical paradox. An atonality we suffer in the name of harmony.” One of the trees has bloomed early. In the park in front of the conservatory. Dabs of pink along a dark core. What are they called? Cherry blossoms, you’d say. You’re all grown up now. Later I […]
[translated poetry] V Fresheur and life “Same current, waters always new” The voice runs over the waters ++++++++++speeches crossed from god to god +++++sorcerous heritage, seaswells burgeoning +++++with careful lightness ++++++++++same as +++++same as grass crown, thatch, lalang; water crystalline, upslope downslope harmony, +++++++++++++++that the spirits’ good humor won’t cloud. Begone-become, begone as foam +++++++++++++++leaving […]
[translated fiction] The first thing he recognized were José Luis’s mannerisms. He remembered the way he’d sit on the bench and chew the little pink eraser on his pencil. Maybe if he tried hard enough he’d be able to remember every part of the school: the sticky hallways, the fossilized gum stuck under the long […]
“Tell your father not to stay out there in the chill; it’ll make him sick.” Actually, it was warm on the patio. The sun already hung low in the sky, but it was still two hours until dark. And the fence around the house shielded don Antonio Nemiña from the winds loaded with dust and […]
Sister My sister is sitting on the bank of a ploughed field, catching the last grains like fish. The black earth is agitated, spattering poisonous salt throwing foam beneath the blackthorn bush. I go up to her, bent and old, sobbing, so she pities me, saying, “Look, I’m cold, I’ll die.” And she answers me, […]
The Fetus of the Dream Dream fetuses. And in the fetus dream, like a growing amplified silence— like ivy around nothing: I dreamed last night. I dreamed of wet ivy— wet like water and rapidly growing— water that smells like old wine in the deepest treasure beneath the earth, where the spider danced the figure […]
“The stench was awful again.” I hear her talking in bed as I shave. “I might have gotten used to it. I’m not sure.” “I don’t understand how someone can get used to something so disgusting and unbearable.” I believed that the unbearable stench in the apartment was affecting our sex life. We were making […]
The Drafting Teacher I’ll tell you all a story about three pencils. The first pencil went to war. Sketched tanks and ravens on the battlefields. The second stayed in town on Roundup Street. Slight and short, it snuck into a hiding place. The third was carried in a pocket to a meadow. There it drew […]
Danica Mae The President’s helicopter will never land near your barangay. He will never walk up to your mother’s house, dust his shoes off before stepping through the door. He’ll never look around where you kept your toys. His eyes won’t linger on your clothes as they hang or lay folded, now separate from the […]
The sea like a coarse mirror of silver reflects a metallic sky of zinc; distant flocks of cormorants tarnish its polished bottom of pallid gray. The sun like a glass, round and opaque, paces to its zenith with a halting gait; the ocean breezes settle in the shadow making a pillow of a black clarinet. […]
The Horseshoe Finder (A Pindaric fragment) We look at a forest and say: +++— Here is timber for ships and masts, Rosy pines, Free of hairy burden to their very tops, They should screech in the storm As lonely pines In a raging forestless air; The plumb-line fastened firmly to the dancing deck will […]
The Jaguar I am leaving the earth with a jaguar in my hand a jaguar that carries a heart in its hand in the silent looms of Mitla the Mexican night grows like sharing bread with a brother I let the jaguar eat my heart jaguar with heart in its hand About Writing this […]
(September 1884) Last Monday, in Etretat, Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatgay died. He was an Indian prince, a relative of His Highness, the Maharaja Gaikwar, Prince of Baroda in the province of Gujarath,in the Bombay Presidency. For about three weeks, we saw about a dozen young Indians passing through the streets: small, supple, with very dark […]
On the wall hung a rifle. A brown rifle. Who knew how many years it had been there. From time to time, my father took it from between the deer, who seemed spooked, and cleaned it, blowing away the dust. He gazed at it, maybe daydreaming, maybe remembering old times, before getting up and hanging […]
Iphigenia’s morning Who recognized these crossroads, these poisonous bogs, false lights of will-o’-the-wisps on succulent marshes? Where are you today and what are you brewing in your copper cauldrons—what new, sudden vision of terrible fate led you to fulfill a familiar prophecy, to spool the skeins of wool? As usual, you are traveling. I am […]
The Nail that Sticks Out: On Vietnamese Poet Ly Doi’s Poetics of Resistance Vietnamese Publishing Law lists the following subjects as taboo. If a writer chooses to publish a piece that crosses these vague restrictions, there’s a good chance he or she can expect a visit from the police, along with some combination of fines, […]
Day of Rest Glass-fibred beings under online drums in the heat of the bits, always a ringing in the ears, more zero than one, up tonine-one-one, plug in the socket, through the night, day in, day out, night failure, day failure power failure. Dead zone of the electrons. Leave the cables where they are, marvel […]
My country, why this crazy love for you? You got me born so I could be your wound. Where can I hide on the barren hill? My verses dog me like old murderers. And deep in my ice every night something breaks. With your name I’ll name the curve you lean on like […]
Aesop’s Language The language of Aesop eludes me, and it’s too late to be taught a new tongue; whether they’re villains, reprobates, or robbers, I’m used to calling the powers that be—with no provisos, no thought for rank or title—by their actual names. I won’t thin complicity among the many, or inflate an individual shame. […]
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