All tears have homes.
I’ve never read about a homeless tear
nor have I met any of them rolling around in the streets
or seen a flood that resulted
from an outpouring of weeping.
Translation
Three Poems
Solitude
by 蕭熠Jackie Hsaio
Translated from the Chinese by Lauren Harper
In her present life, she had about five friends. Since she frequented nowhere, she wouldn’t necessarily have met them. They were all from past lives, and she wasn’t sure why they’d remained. Like limescale build-up in the bend of a pipe, thickening with time and the water flow. Impossible to ignore after a while. One […]
Three Poems by Alfonsina Storni,
translated from the Spanish by Norman Weinstein and Celia Gil Llamas
Zoological garden of clouds I’ve got to sing to the cloud overhead: Here’s to you, tender teddy bear, your lover kisses another cottony cloud, and when you bite it, the cloud disperses. And there’s the snake that chased me in my dreams, this one: and then there’s a pink heron coming from the river, and […]
Review: Marlon Hacla’s Glossolalia translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim
by Jacqueline Schaalje
“Can our rot ripen? According to the books, our future is on fire like a child pelted with kerosene and lit, pushed to start walking. (‘Stairs’).”
Honest Isak
by Jasna Dimitrijević
Translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
Honest Isak The door was opened by a tiny woman with curly hair tied up in a bun, which was pinned on the top of her head like a giant chestnut. She couldn’t have been any taller than 5’3”, but my eyes still came in a good two and a half inches under the tips […]
Love, Mother
by Miklós Vámos
translated from the Hungarian by Ági Bori
Károly! I haven’t seen you in a week! My mother is in the hospital, Isti is failing his classes, the neighbors saw Mari kissing a boy in the building’s doorway, and you don’t give a shit about anything!
Excerpt from Caderno de Um Ausente [Notes from an Absentee],
Novella-in-Flash by João Anzanello Carrascoza, translated from the Portuguese by Ilze Duarte
The first guests who have come to see you are already forgotten, such are the comings and goings of people in our life, and while you are passed from one guest to another, time adjusts your expressions, closes your fontanelle, settles on the color of your eyes and hair; and time is already digging deep […]
*In Tandem*
by Melinda Mátyus, translated from the Hungarian by Jozefina Komporaly
1. I left, just so that I didn’t have to set eyes on him. I could have left without saying a word, but I did tell him that I was about to leave. Only to go to the shops, mind you. He asked me what I wanted to buy, and I snapped that it was […]
Agua De Mayo
by Orland Agustin Solis
translated from the Hiligaynon by Eric Abalajon
Orland Agustin Solis is an emerging poet in Hiligaynon. Using visceral nature themes and urgent verbs, his poems often tackle themes of persistent feudalism especially in Western Visayas, Philippines.
Kind of an Artist
by Viggo Bjerring, translated from the Danish by Rob Myatt
My fast-talking brother-in-law had a proposition for me. The whole family had gathered round the table as he carved the Christmas duck and announced what an outrage it was that two nights per week I was staying up into the wee hours to stick a tube down the throat of some handicapped guy out in […]