but here is how we name the birds, says Kawenniostha
in Kanienkeha: by the sounds, by their voices
how they talk about the weather
yoro, yoro on an overcast day
From my childhood, I remember the slides from Park Missouri, the green aluminum rocket that smelled like piss, rides where I would go round and round, gripping the iron bars, like a Papantla Flyer, but upside down. If you weren’t careful, the chains would hit you.
I remember stopping on the highway and going to a restaurant in Villa de Santiago
You spill,
end of delight,
a translucent initial in my pelvis,
Go back, go home, go away with your language
In my land, only order takeaway with your language
ਤੂੰ ਇਤਨਾ ਛੱਪਰ ਛੱਪਰ ਦੱਸੇ ਤੋ ਸਮਝ ਕਿੱਥੋ ਆਵੇ
We’re traveling to the little farm our grandparents built in the middle of the vineyards. With feet used to the dried up rhythm of our tired city, Minu and Rumbi will step, for the first time, into the simple world of vegetables, fruits, and farm animals.
The big yellow bus rumbled along, flattening the grasses along the edge of the road. The fence posts for the ranches the bus was passing stood in line, keeping the fence wires in place, though here and there a sprouting post had already become a tree again. Rain had moistened the land and there were puddles in the road;
Joe, a friend of mine, was unwell. Even after consulting many doctors for over three months and taking numerous medications, there was no relief. They had him undergo many medical tests such as x-rays and scans, and they also examined the blood work, but no one could figure out the illness he was ailing from.
You shall now become a man of rock.
A solid and sturdy man,
slightly chipped.
Tonight, we drive out of town. Dear,
your face is unfamiliar, so are your fingers,
your thighs, your calves. This body
evokes my curiosity. But in living bodies,
I’m no longer interested, they are more or less the same.
I hear God’s promise of forgiveness in the babbling wine.
From the rubab, I hear the clang of Paradise’s gate.
This is the difference when we hear:
you hear the door closing, I hear it opening.
Ida
Pierced the light
The air thick as fog
The black mirror full of moss
Is shatter-scattered now
There was a nearly suffocating smell: smell of old walls, it struck me like the melodies that resurrect in the heart the deepest memories. You know: on that sofa I wept so much when I knew you wouldn’t come back. And today, in the doorway, my soul of that time took hold of me; in an instant my entire past returned. . .
I sleep and everything sleeps. The bread dough sleeps in the bowl covered with a damp cloth. The jars are sleeping in the cupboard, each a womb of enameled glass. Quinces sleep, household suns, on embroidered bridal linens in the hope chest. Tomorrow you’ll be fine. Between dreams, I hear you. Tomorrow, you’ll run, as if this were nothing. It’s just that you’re growing. . .
From the spring of 1986 onwards, Vera’s abdomen, stomach, or something thereabouts, hurt. It didn’t hurt all the time. It hurt sometimes. It didn’t even always hurt in the same way. At times, it hurt more; at other times, it hurt less. They thought: it happens. One’s stomach hurts sometimes. It will go away.
Because my heart
is honey and soft wax
flesh craving a fingerprint
or just a dent––
I dream, defer, despair,
and in love’s hundred prisons,
die and die again.
The guns sing a carmine joy incarnate—note how, here, two figures of speech live in peaceful coexistence to narrate an epic event.[…]
Now she can’t do anything anymore, so, when I visit her, I tell her to prepare the salad, just to kill time. She peels away the bad leaves, and I tell her, “Throw them away and leave the good ones.” She starts, but then she forgets, so we eat the rotten salad and we mix it with curcuma and balsamic vinaigrette to cover the bad taste.[…]
And when the night draws its celebrations to a close, the hares undress all alone, sexes smeared from long storms. Perhaps we’ve forgotten that the body, yes the body, finds a desolate kind of beauty once exposed […]
Blame me not, but society, morals, laws, and customs Your mother as a pioneer was a martyr of destiny Someday you may come as ambassadors to Paris Find my grave, leave one flower for me[…]
Havana reverberates, resists,
bursting through the cobblestones.
Light years,
I sense a galaxy of infant stars.
I don’t use its name and it doesn’t use mine […]
[translated poetry] Before Spring A strange sound wakes you. Your heart? Your stomach? Just the pipes. Two-thirty in the morning. A pale lane of light pollution looms between the high rises on the horizon. Above it, a thin strip of sky. Like clumps of minerals in a newly discovered mining cavity, dim stars shine. The […]
[translated flash prose] Take this seed. Plant it in an olla that has only been used to make coffee. Water it lightly Tuesdays and Fridays around midnight. It will grow into a plant with black flowers. Cut them with a man’s knife and grind them up in a new lava stone mortar. You will be […]
[translated fiction] Dime-a-dozen, fair-weather friends—the ones you met to do nothing but sit around, drink beer, and gab. The night we hung out was of the same kind. On one side of the booth sat men who wanted a one night stand. None of the ladies on the other side were seeking Mr. Right, either. […]
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Photo Credit: Móni Szűcs
Photo Credit: Eri Takahashi
Credit: Nancy Falk
Amber Estes Thieneman
Credit: Arce Jebbel
Credit Vladimir Levashov