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The Night Security Guard

November 27, 2023/ Emil-Iulian Sude translated by Diana Manole

Gabo Prize Winner Issue 24 Winter Spring 2024

Missus doctor suspects us of good health

we’re easy to recognize

dressed in our work uniforms.

those fellas are security guards. if you give them

something to guard they think themselves gods.

she wants to see if we have all we need

or maybe something extra. who knows. where we

split and we aren’t whole anymore

she puts all sorts of questions to our electric hearts

as if she’d like to know honest to God

what came over us

and our steaming women pass by

smelling of homemade cozonac

for the regular checkups she surely has

a huge comb to groom us

and she’s left with a handful of our hair

she braids it into blonde pigtails flower-power.

we’re served bloody rare steaks

we’re so sluggish and feel so good we crack up

when we slip off the slanted table

because we’re so sloshed. but missus doctor

takes care we don’t spill she puts a

cap on each of us and wishes us happy birthday.

Doamna doctor ne bănuieşte de sănătate


suntem uşor

de recunoscut îmbrăcați

în echipamentul de serviciu.

ăştia sunt paznici. dacă

le dai ceva să păzească se cred dumnezei.

vrea să vadă dacă avem tot ce ne trebuie

sau poate în plus. cine ştie. pe unde ne-am

despărțit şi nu mai suntem întregi

ne pune tot soiul de întrebări pe inimile noastre electrice

să afle ea vezi Doamne

de la ce ni se trage

femeile noastre de trecere

aburinde miros a cozonaci de casă

are ea pentru controlul periodic

un pieptene uriaş să ne dichisească

şi-i rămâne de la noi o mână de păr

cu care-și împleteşte codițe blonde flower power.

noi suntem serviți cu friptură în sânge

aşa molateci şi ne simțim bine râdem zgomotos

când alunecăm de pe masa înclinată

de beți ce suntem. însă doamna doctor

are grijă să nu ne vărsăm ne pune câte

un cep şi ne urează la mulți ani.

We hang upside down from the railing

bats looking to the void in our down time. missus

technology teacher stared at one of the hours too much. the hour

stared back. she throws a reason at us every time.

we get bloated from some of the curses.

we’re coming apart nuts bolts and all. a new heart waiting.

one liver at a time. powder kegs we sometimes crane our necks flashing

on low heat dry beans.

we remember the herbarium book

of nerves. forget that we’re alive. we don’t even hope

for death.

how can you keep fireflies from roaming

in the hallways you disappoint me I tell them.

they don’t want to go to class

to put good behaviors on their desks

mister German teacher has two watches

one for each building. he’s not even a minute late

in building A or building B.

when he misses a minute he crouches down

covers his eyes with his hands to cry on the inside.

a child who doesn’t arrive on time.

we coddle him we’re kind.



Atârnăm de balustradă cu capul în jos

lilieci spre hău din timpul nostru de stat degeaba. doamna

profesor de tehnologie s-a uitat în câte o oră prea mult. ora

s-a uitat în ea. aruncă de fiecare dată cu câte un motiv în noi.

ne balonăm de la câte o înjurătură.

ne desfacem din șuruburi și piulițe. inimă nouă în așteptare.

câte un ficat. ne mai întindem un car de nervi gâturile flash-uri

la foc mic fasole boabe.

ne aducem aminte de cartea

ierbar de nervi. uităm că trăim. nici la moarte

nu sperăm.

cum să ții licuricii să nu mai zburde

pe holuri le spun mă dezamăgiți.

nu vor să intre la clase

să așeze pe bănci apucături frumoase

domnul profesor de limba germană are două ceasuri

pentru fiecare corp. nu întârzie niciun minut

în corp A nici în corp B.

când pierde un minut se pune pe ciuciulică

duce doua palme la ochi să plângă pe interior.

un copil ce nu ajunge la timp.

noi îl alintăm suntem darnici.

Translator’s Statement

Emil-Iulian Sude’s poetry is defined by an organic magic naturalism style, often creating surrealist  imagery with sordid everyday details, and consistently surprising the readers. One of the first award-winning poets of Roma ethnicity in Romania, the writer and his poetic alter ego belong to the Roma ethnic minority, which enslaved in Eastern Europe and specifically until 1856 in Romania, and has been  discriminated against, feared, or derisively stereotyped, mistreated, or ignored thereafter. Avoiding both self-victimization and explicit sociopolitical activism, Sude’s poetry speaks about poverty, discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping, but also about love, death, and God. The poems published in this issue belong to the collection Paznic de noapte ([The Night Security Guard] Casa Cărţilor, România, 2023), which was awarded the “Ion Zubașcu” prize at the 2023 Sighet International Poetry Festival.

The differences between Romanian and English, especially the lack of declension of nouns and  adjectives in English, make translating poetry quite difficult in general. Sude’s oral diction, which doesn’t shy away from slang and common grammar mistakes in Romanian, the lack of punctuation and the line breaks that often bestow opposite meanings to a word on first and subsequent lines, and made-up idioms inspired by Romani expressions, add to the usual challenges. Finding the best solutions can be a fascinating task, while it also serves to introduce English readers to Roma literature from Romania in general, and Sude’s poetry in particular.

Sude Headshot

Emil-Iulian Sude is one of the first award-winning poets of Roma ethnicity in Romania and a third-year student at the University of Bucharest, majoring in Romani and minoring in Romanian languages and literatures. He published five collections of poems, starting with Scărarul ([The Ladder Maker] Cluj-Napoca: Grinta, 2014), which was translated into Hebrew by Menachem M. Falek and published in Israel (Zur-Ot, 2014), and, most recently, Paznic de noapte ([The Night Security Guard] Baia Mare: Casa Cărţilor, 2023). Sude has earned 20 awards, including the 2018 Diploma of Excellence for his contribution to the development and promotion of Roma culture and identity.

Diana Manole Headshot

Bucharest-born Diana Manole is a proudly hyphenated Romanian-Canadian award-winning writer, literary translator, theater artist, and scholar. She co-won 2nd prize in the 2018 John Dryden Translation Competition, translated or co-translated seven poetry collections, and, independently, two Roma plays from Romania, published in the English-language anthologies Roma Heroes (Hungary, 2019 & 2021), and numerous poems published in magazines. Praying to a Landed-Immigrant God / Rugându-mă la un Dumnezeu emigrant (Grey Borders Books, 2023) is her seventh collection of poems. Diana thanks her son, Tudor Manole, for his editing help. Photo by Alex Usquiano.

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

Behind the Eight Ball: How to Become Homeless in the Richest Country in the World

June 13, 2025/in Blog / Michelle Hampton
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Products of Our Environment

March 14, 2025/in Blog / Michelle Hampton
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Dig Into Genre

May 23, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Michelle Hampton
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The dreams in which I’m (not) dying

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On The Map

March 28, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Michelle Hampton
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Tale of the resistant apple tree

June 6, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / paparouna
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Talyshi Wall Graffiti and other poems

May 30, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Michelle Hampton
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we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

May 16, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Michelle Hampton
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

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A Communal Announcement

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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Caroline Shannon Karasik
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Word From the Editor

The state of the world breaks my heart every day. Broken hearted, I stay online. I can’t log off. Because my career and schooling are all done remotely, I tend to struggle with boundaries regarding screen time, with knowing when to break away.

Like many of you, I have been spilling my guts online to the world because the guts of the world keep spilling. None of it is pretty. But it’s one of the things that, having searched for basically my entire life, I found that tempers the chaos that lives rent free inside my head.

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