(Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) At its absolute worst, “travel writing” (including poetry) can come off as the uninspired musings of the self-indulgent, in the way that touristy family photos really only matter to you if the subject … Continued
Translated from Arabic by Thoraya El-Rayyes Like stars on a dark black night, flocks of clouds passing before them—that was how bodies writhed in the celestial nightclub, slicing the lights as they undulated. The Almighty Boss sent forth his … Continued
Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk When they execute me, not everything will come to an end. The soldier who shot me dead will approach and say: as young as my daughter. And he’ll lower his head. … Continued
In the hipbone slopes of the Owyhee Mountains, my sister lives in an abandoned shepherd’s homestead. She says the white alkaline hills are closing in on her, that she can taste the iron in the sand and it tastes like … Continued
Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk All week they hauled sandbags night and day to the gate, to the windows. Facing the Germans, our house will be a fortress, we’ll survive. At dawn on the seventh day a … Continued
Riding behind him it comes back to me like a kindness, this feeling of hearing a song I’d forgotten but know the words to—or my mouth does, the way my legs know to keep pedaling so I’m free … Continued
They started taking things from her. First, the marriage, then the job. She should have been chosen as deputy county attorney. She knew it was because of the divorce, which dirtied her in the courthouse. She was a domestic-abuse victim … Continued
Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk She was dying in the basement, on sacks of coal, crying for water, crying for her son, no one was there. The son forgot about his mother, the son was cleaning his rifle. … Continued
The woman is big but she is not beautiful. I am somebody who likes beautiful women, regardless of size, in fact for a long time I thought the bigger the better, but not like this. She is big like the … Continued
“Nothing wrong,” says the husband near the end of Shirley Jackson’s story “Paranoia.” But like the couples in David Lynch’s Lost Highway or Michael Haneke’s Caché, who keep being delivered surveillance VHSs—tapes in which, first their homes and then they … Continued
White phosphor we wait for winter. People go. Inside the house sarin gas I know a village spills out into sky while a man pumps his gas america- stubborn. White phosphor my arches itch, my blood carried by mosquitoes as … Continued