[translated poetry] LONELY POET, QUIET RESTAURANT Words in the head, restaurant nearby Clouds have amassed in the month of Asharh reminding of Distressed days—streets are bumpy all over. Who knows when they’ll be cleared of mud-heaps! In these hours he has to find a way out. Poetry and coffee are waiting for him. Suddenly rain starts, […]
[translated poetry] He had said, My woman, come to the lamppost when the coldest night arrives / There will be a rock / Sit on it / Or at least set your heart on it / The fog will envelop you from all sides / On this canvas of fog, your breath will be visible like sweeps of […]
[translated fiction] In his account of traveling along the Orinoco, Humboldt describes a strange ritual in which the native people go into the depths of a cave to catch birds with pitch-black feathers that they call tayos. As they penetrate the cave, the men bang together enormous river-bottom rocks and shake rattles made of dried […]
[translated fiction] Just a moment please (they all look at me: they’re recent graduates, twenty-four, twenty-seven years old), then you can try out the program and do what you have to do, but before you download it be aware that it isn’t compatible with Macs or the latest version of Windows. So, if you’re using […]
[self-translated poetry] Feast of the Sacrifice and no sacrifice neither wealth nor goats yet each one a sacrifice— It hurts hurts of hunger and thirst hurts of fear and belittlement sacrifices of the invaluable, the self Feast of the Sacrifice and each one is Ismail under the looming hand sacrifice small and weak witnessing the […]
[translated fiction] Where was he coming from? The question lacked any possible answer. Other than “from home.” For the following reason: a cat never arrives anywhere, he returns. Each time I see him returning from his walk, I tell myself the same thing. That’s the feeling a cat always gives you. Even when he sets […]
[translated poetry] Soldiers Are Sleepless Prey Do the coarse fingers of soldiers who are fighting wars touch their children’s soft hands? Did they ever know tenderness? Were soldiers who are fighting wars born soft-skinned babies with a refined laughter? Did their mothers bathe them with hot water and laurel soap and smilingly comb their hair? […]
[translated fiction] The compartment door banged open and the conductor informed us that we’d arrive in Montpellier in one hour. I repacked my things, freshened up, and went out to the corridor, waiting to see the city that would be my new home. I don’t really remember why we’d picked Montpellier for me to attend […]
[translated poetry] First Afternoons in Lesbos Remember those afternoons in November. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The rain would make the patio a cloister, and the smell of the earth would reach the window from which we leaned. It was then that the house was our refuge, the island where we made our hands mature, our bodies barely debuted. […]
[translated poetry] Rhapsody on Stench Don’t stay at cheap hotels—just don’t, he said prostitutes that knock on doors at midnight, just like disposable containers containing disposable sex disposable toilet paper and paper cups, rusty faucets manageresses who apply too much fake perfume even the artificial lighting and white bed sheets all have stench for forty […]
[translated poetry] * This is how, oh so quietly, with their eyes closed, babies are dropped into the world. Like grains of rain, in the dark, from the palm of a giant hand into tubes, into a spider’s tent, a cold apple. The world is quiet, in the transparent beehive cells the babies slumber, estranged […]
[translated fiction] Class struggles had been replaced by racial animosity, which was being replaced by an unprecedented form of resentment, primitive, unclassifiable, unstructured, and all-encompassing. People hated people all day, every day. Days of wrath, days of tremendous anger, and every evening he had to convince these embittered adults to buy a contraption they had […]
My haunt my drinking place was there, lit by a moon I was not there. My intoxication personified, was there Not I. On the slippery slope to that bar, lips craving wine I was not there An eon of thirsts tottering, was there Not I. Maikada mai-kada thā chāñdnī thī maiñ na thā […]
© Éditions Inculte (2014) *or who shot him first or who shot him second or who is the first to have seen him dead or who is the one who in the helicopter sat on his body or who made it all up to have a story to tell Based on real facts and […]
Violet and Sydney Schiff were an extremely sophisticated English couple, rich, cultured and cosmopolitan, who moved between London and Paris. He was a translator and writer, using the pseudonym Stephen Hudson, but first and foremost he was a patron of the arts, on friendly terms with Modernism’s greatest talents. She was an elegant and captivating […]
Night, and your absent memory crept into my heart As in a wasteland, spring blossoms quietly As in a desert, the zephyr sways gently As to a dying man, relief comes, unexpectedly. Rubai Raat yuuñ dil meñ tirī khoī huī yaad aa.ī Jaise vīrāne meñ chupke se bahār aa jaa.e Jaise sahrāoñ meñ […]
A sin of beauty is a toy forever: I transgress; I jumble up words, fumble for the right age, mislabel Keats for Yeats, bumble between the present tense and the past tense. For elegance, for beauty, for my inflexible desire, I dismiss faithfulness and disable meaning. I mistranslate flyable twilight as an unshakable rock in […]
Gravedigger The song of the factory’s fans and the telephone that announces: life is so fragile like this state in which one writes. There’s a reason the trees shake at the bottom of this painting, as if somebody had opened a door through which the wind is expelled, house distorted by memory. But like a […]
1 The ogre is bad-tempered He throws a fit Hurling rotten stones Giant stale rocks, to be more precise The ogre wants fresh stones And the dream doesn’t leave him alone: I want stones Timely stones My exhaustion wants them Living stones Stones that break away from your seconds fall over me Stones that pour […]
BOOK I, 16 You’ll find good, middling, then bad in spades among these pages: So, dear reader, books get made. BOOK I, 23 Bathtime, that’s your banquet’s subtext: Feasting, soaking, double portions of beef. My guess why I never got be your guest? Undressed, I’m not your type. What a relief. BOOK I, 28 Acerra […]
All my bones will say woman. All my bones say woman. Woman. Why do you curve. Why do you adapt. Why do you embody pity. Why. Lips rounded Your streets are lucid smiles Your palate candied. Your bones are bleached deep Your lips two weekdays sealed With golden twine. Your lakes are ancient dreams Crucified […]
Like a prodigal son, Lufuluabo returns. He returns from a long and difficult journey. He will have to get used to the new manners and new names of the avenues and principal squares of the city: Avenue Mobuto [1] is now L. D. Kabila [2] Street; the images of President Mobutu have been replaced by […]
L’Angoisse qui fait les fous. L’Angoisse qui fait les suicidés. ANTONIN ARTAUD III. A HORIZONTAL JOB ++++Poor Miguel Ángel. I’ve always said he had the worst luck. There are lucky dogs—but he’s one unlucky dog. ++++He had looked for work. The offices emery-polished and the banks full. He had looked with the utmost sadness. ++++One […]
— The sea is so blue, the valley so deep. That’s why sadness goes far and wide. But you must stare it in the eye. Only by braving it will you outgrow the child and be an adult. To the children at Gangkou Elementary School, Hualien County, Taiwan. Ina often calls my name on this […]
The evening flares, the cat naps on a beam. Someone is praying: “Lord Jesus.” The twilight blazes, the fog kindles; There is a scarlet curtain over the ornate window. Spider webs stretch from the golden toolshed. Somewhere a mouse is scratching in a closed cage… By the forest meadow—bundles of wheat. Firs, like spears, rest […]
My Wife It was at the end of a dinner of men, married men, old friends who get together sometimes without their wives, boys as in the past. They would eat a long time; they would drink a lot; they would speak of everything. Old and youthful memories would move them; those warm memories that […]
Fantasma Ghost (n.) The soul of a dead person / A disembodied spirit Incapable of passing Freely to a peaceful afterlife, Usually imagined as wandering among living persons. ++++++From Old English gast “soul, breath, life; good or bad spirit” ++++++From Proto-Indo-European *gheis “to be excited, amazed, frightened” La gente no cree que existo. Paso por […]
November Bats circle amid the yellow withered plane trees that hover above the old church cupola. The sad singing of the flying cranes grieves the meadow. Autumn toasts white winter. The storm on the other side has no pity, even for itself, and the fire will melt the wind’s rabid song. Twilight masters the soul—it’s […]
It’s morning, the hawks are hunting. It’s morning, the hawks are hunting. Frightening are those other forms of life which see no value in humanity: the dark forest, the beasts of prey, the mafia, the extremist movements for decent citizens, the enemies for all, the neighbours, The Great Satan. On the way home from the […]
I. Winter sits heavy in our guts and we can no longer chew —in confident, elegant pride— herbs, bark, and rocks on the rough roads of the diaspora. Poetry left wrinkles around our eyes and tongue a miniature egg wrapped in a cloth and the smoke of a train leaving for the gray snow of […]
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