Drafts of Love: five poems
translated from French and Arabic by Susanna Lang and Kay Keikkinen A woman walks by hands in her pockets once she has passed out of sight I’ll forget your last words I no longer know if … Continued
Poetry
Interrogation V ||| Diode
He isn’t giving me any answers. His book of scripture is open on the floor. If I lean in close, with my lips next to his ear, He whispers back verse after verse. It’s no use trying to bridge this … Continued
I dreamed my mother condemned ||| BOAAT
my lingerie I’d accidentally sent her a photo of myself in the new black cling-wrap meant for my lover my thumbs go loose after 2 a.m. so I typed … Continued
And Are We Yet Alive ||| The American Journal of Poetry
The woman has a Salt Lake stormcloud for a hairdo. She yells from her wheelchair like a man whose prayers have gone unanswered for years. There’s no one else in the hallway. The flesh of … Continued
Self-portrait before Penalty Kick ||| Prairie Schooner
You are on the line the ref’s whistle opens a cloud opens your stomach its shrill is something you swallow a silence opens like a door and on the other side are one thousand closed mouths … Continued
[If the rain is everywhere]
If the rain is everywhere and it is we will soon be taking to the boats and carrying with us only our most precious and lightest things: the birds, in pairs or in flocks, two or … Continued
Home with H
Translated from Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy Especially in spring in a large party it is clear which persons are closest to death: They don’t know why they avoid each other’s gaze One stares himself blind … Continued
The Space Traveler’s Father’s Missing Brother ||| Superstition Review
Picture this: on a planet at the edge of a spiral arm, a kid brother leaves an apartment. And never comes back. As if the apartment door opened onto the pull of space, and he fluttered … Continued
AUTOBIOGRAPHY ||| Dunes Review
My mother’s eyes—a green sometimes blue, or gray— my father studied them the way he studied light with his camera lens constantly, there was a sadness, Slavic and cloud-like. My … Continued
Kudzu Vine ||| Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation
Translated from the ancient Chinese Book of Odes (Seventh Century BCE) The kudzu vine has spread to the middle of the gorge, heavy with leaves! Orioles fly by to gather in the bushes and practice … Continued
Totem
Hatched from the wet egg of a sculptor’s eye a quarter century ago, it grips its squat stump, wings outstretched as if to dry. Its bones are wires, its plumage ragged strips of pages torn from my … Continued
I never meant to be mean ||| Crab Orchard Review
Though it happened. When I threw the plant across the kitchen counter, I never meant to crush its unstraight stalk crude with green sureness, cracking pottery chips across the tile floor. I meant to scoop handfuls of … Continued
Snapshot
The Husband & I stand next to each other: not speaking, sometimes speaking. See? Asks the photograph. A closeness or almostness? The photograph is meaningless except insofar as it is a record of us in a place at a moment … Continued
No. 1964
Translated by Robert Hedin and Dag T. Straumsvåg I’m prisoner 1964, my birth year. My cell number is the same as my phone number. I often sit in front of my cell door looking for cracks in the … Continued
Sex Machina
Against a xeroxed purity I’m learning to say My pleasure Pouring one out For narrative unity Watching soap operas On a stained futon I’m learning about free will How little I have Nature produces automata Opening an email … Continued
Debt Free
I knew someone Who went broke throwing clam bakes A generous backfire There are wet dreams It aches to wake from Like unlearning the axiom that To love anyone You have to love everyone Watching my love rescue … Continued
Object Permanence
Making out inside a Richard Serra Strikes me as the right way to take in art Like embracing an echo The moment examined mercurifies An eviscerated longing I feel like a voyeur Eating warm cheese at the gallery … Continued
Unlike nostos, algo is unspecified.
nunca sé por dónde empezar, así que decido hacerlo al comerme una fresa incontable la cantidad de semillas can you say I’m of two minds? yo diría que tengo ideas encontradas lo cual abre dos posibilidades: que se encuentren como … Continued
Hymn: Plain As Day ||| Going Haywire and Other Old Sayings
Dawn fades in when I least expect it. Where are the books that held me once, my brave invective, the pictures forming in the darkroom? Memory leaves with her usual lack of meaning, a darkness with … Continued
A Kind of Poetry
Sometimes you turn to poetry the way you turn to another country. Everything is better, more humane. You notice things you wouldn’t otherwise. You notice things. Watching gardeners trim branches for birds to fly through reminds you of … Continued