On dark days, days when she thought there was really nothing important to be done, she had the impression that for women like herself, the world might just keep shrinking down until it was small enough to fit into a shopping list. And then everything would seem to contract, to the point where she couldn’t breathe any more, as if the walls and the ceiling were closing in on her…
Featured Translation
Islands by Elena Varvello,
Three Poems by Argyris Stavropoulos
translated from the Greek by Gigi Papoulias
“At last moving day has arrived.
From today, another house, indeed more spacious and airy
drenched in nonnegotiable sunlight, will accommodate me
and all the things the movers are struggling to carry…”
Answer Yes Or No by Khairi Hamdan
translated from the Bulgarian by Katerina Stoykova
Answer the call of the flute—
the lost impulse of the absent poets,
the incomplete painting, the unrained cloud,
the prophecy of an upcoming confession—
From Decarceration by Charline Lambert
Translated from the French by John Taylor
Before grasping, taking
the pulse,
consider the litigation
Montale and Martins
Translated by Richard Price
Haul your paper ships up the scorched shore
and then sleep, little-boy captain –
may you never hear the evil spirits
sailing now in flocks.
Extract from X by Valentina Mira
translated from the Italian by Sean McDonagh
When it’s my turn to sleep, I dream of a wolf. It follows me around the rooms of the house. I have no idea what it wants with me, nor who is hiding beneath that fur. I wake up with my heart beating in its ribcage; it’s weird, it seems almost like it intends to take flight as if it were a hummingbird. And unfortunately, it’s a heart instead.
Three Ai Poems
by Chandra Livia Candiani
Translated from the Italian by Elisabetta Taboga and Roy Duffield
Look mum it’s Ai
the number that escaped
the last of your sums, the figure
that doesn’t add up.
Standing at the Empty Mouth
by Abboud Aljabiri,
translated from the Arabic by Muntather Alsawad and Jeffrey Clapp
He was as calm as his family wanted,
managing a laugh each day of his life
and washing the traces away
with soap and water
Mr. Z by Grzegorz Wróblewski
Translated from the Polish by Peter Burzyński
Mr. Z opened the door to a preacher of the One Truth: the man in a hat looked around the room.
Wichita
by Nadia Villafuerte, translated from the Spanish
by Pennell Somsen
A family is an accident. I know because I live far from mine and sometimes I catch myself repeating their patterns from miles away, at other times they’re a band of strangers, like I would encounter at a bus stop, if we rub elbows.
