A wet canvas ragbag in the gutter: it’s the picture of grapes by Zeuxis, which enraged birds craved so much, picked apart so fiercely with their greedy beaks, that the clusters vanished, then the colors, then every trace of the image at this hour—the twilight of the world—when they dragged it across the flagstones.
Featured Translation
The Wandering Life by Yves Bonnefoy
Izokumi by Alexy Dumenigo
translated from the Spanish by Toshiya Kamei
Izokumi For casualties and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki It began with a flash. A chalky light filled every corner of the small hospital room and pierced the girl’s closed eyelids. Her nightmares that had haunted her since the night before faded as she woke. However, the intense light around her prevented her from opening […]
An Excerpt from Until The Victim Becomes Our Own
by Dimitris Lyacos, translated from the Greek by Andrew Barrett
G We don’t know how, and under which circumstances they left from that place, whether they in fact abandoned the city and during which time frame. Whether they set out in stages, or all at once, if they moved somewhere else and to which place exactly, and if something happened to make them emigrate […]
The Butterfly Cemetery by Franca Mancinelli translated from the Italian by John Taylor,
reviewed by Caroline Maldonado
Italian poet Franca Mancinelli has internalized the landscape she grew up in poetically to express some of her deepest emotions. Beginning from the tremors, earthquakes and mudslides of her life and landscape, the poet develops her riveting ars poetica. “I have often felt that I carry writing in my body,” she writes, “that I have been inscribed in the darkness. (…) We are the imprint of the time that has been, of the life that has passed through us. By writing we bring to light these signs that we contain, as they are, obscure and indecipherable to us. It is like leaning over a threshold that looks into the void. We are between the unknown and nothingness.”
Three Poems by Gerardo Arístides Rivodó
translated from the Spanish by David M. Brunson
me acostumbraré al presagio
de una casa vacía
al vuelo que dibujas
sobre cielos penitentes
a la rotura de un pájaro
Caterpillar by Dragana Mokan
translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
Agnica was sitting in a pink room that smelled sweet. Mama had sent her to the neighbors to get a bouquet. She accepted a plate of cake from Miss Jovanka.
Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
A witch gave you a pair of legs
(and other things I won’t mention).
Satisfied with your new body, you set off
for dry land. It was August and nobody
was surprised to see you on the beach,
naked and smiling
Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin
translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang,
reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
The daring viewpoint of a homophobe widow makes for a toe-curling, but also hopeful read in the riveting Korean bestseller by Kim Hye-jin, Concerning My Daughter, dealing with the loneliness and ostracism of a lesbian couple and a single elderly woman.
The Poem Under Gag by Abdellatif Laâbi
translated from the French by Allan and Guillemette Johnston
Hello sunshine of my country
how good it is to be alive today
so much light
so much light around me
Of Bad Borders by Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou
translated from the Persian by Siavash Saadlou
I am writing of the morning of fair dreams,
of the dancing of your hands; those beautiful
lithe hands that hoist before the new morning…
