Literature in Translation |
from Victorious
“Those three days were my gateway into the soul of the military. After that, I went out into the field many more times. I didn’t wait for them to come see me on the verge of collapse.”
Lyric Prose |
“a treat”
“We played together until she was called home for dinner. She told me to visit her any time and gave me the number of her flat, pointing to the door that led to her section of units.”
Literature in Translation |
“Labour,” “Piano Factory” & “Without tears the eyes spill by themselves”
“Today I am clutching Mandelstam’s poem like a broken glass, / though it seems not of today, or yesterday, or tomorrow. / A poem explains nothing, / it’s like an orchestra wandering lost in the fields …”
Poetry |
“A Zoom Reading in Which Fanny Howe’s Computer Dies”
“Fanny begins to read, and through / the screen of her screen to mine, she says / she’s wearing the wrong glasses. Oh technology — // just failure made more efficient.”
Poetry |
“Awakening from a Dream” & “What the Migraine Said”
“The sleep of reason produces monsters — / this we know from art and the news: / murder and sham leaders shooting themselves / in one foot and chewing on the other.”
Poetry |
“The Mothers”
“The mothers watched us, / and we watched them, my mother working clay, / Barbara’s mother, long at her easel, Jean’s mother, / swimming and sketching.”
Literature in Translation |
from No Way in the Skin without This Bloody Embrace
“The sirens’ song provides an abridged idea of your / voice. You’re still this broken shimmer tormenting / the mirror of the banality of men.”
Poetry |
“Translating the Body”
“Our organs sing in different keys / like sirens in a sea of blood. / The body feels before it knows.”
Poetry |
“Ice Cream Truck”
“We will have cones, please. / Vanilla with rainbow sprinkles. / We will have the whole ice cream truck / and the street it is on. One serving / of the fence by the water. The water.”
Poetry |
“Walking to Synagogue on Yom Kippur” & “A Rock Is Not a Stone”
“… and before I could recall her name, the daughter / said: Who is Maya? and I thought, She’s not an angel.”
Literature in Translation |
“The Day Jupiter Met Saturn (Another Colorful Story)”
“From this angle, she looked less like a living woman than a watercolor painting, frozen as if she were very calm, and in fact she was, only she couldn’t feel anything anymore, she hadn’t for a long while.”
Essay |
“The Latest Scar in Time”
“May I clarify more of the ‘crack-up’? The non-speaking self draped itself with a different garter and gown, of the reading and reflective self — a near impossible person to share with others in mixed company …”
Poetry |
“The Lunch Lady: A Pantoum”
“What was her story? We didn’t care. / She was just the lunch lady; / the one who forced us to eat our sandwiches. / I can still see her reaching into the trash.”
Poetry |
“The Needle and the Thread”
“I live inside a book, the girl says to herself / We are all alive inside a book / That’s what you think, says the front door.”