I Have Forged My Own Man (from मैंने गढ़ा है अपना पुरुष, राजकमल प्रकाशन, 2022) Resting an elbow on his thigh, I am smoking a cigar. I have hidden my autumn in his hat. All the heroines are jealous of me for how could I forge my own man. I said—he is not a […]
Translation
I Have Forged My Own Man
They Were My Loved Ones
by Imad Kadhum Abdulla, translated from the Arabic by Fatimah Abdulridha
They Were My Loved Ones I am a stranger amongst you. The war has eaten most of my loved ones, and fear has exiled the rest. Because I am lonely, I have mysterious hobbies. I now fish in the busses for the employed single ladies, I sit next to one of them and pretend to […]
Eat, Love and Split
Xiangli Pan, translated from the Chinese by Xiaoming Shan and Siyi Kang
Eat, Love, and Split Lan Ting Hui is a restaurant that has been open for twenty years in the city’s center, specializing in Cantonese cuisine. Cantonese cuisine has always held a special place in the hearts of Shanghainese. While other regional cuisines come and go like a merry-go-round, Cantonese cuisine consistently ranks among the top […]
Three Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya,
translated from the Bahasa Indonesian by Edward Gunawan
Bubble Butt deep down the crack is a new shopping mall, so happening. rows of old cemeteries successfully exhumed. AIDS gentrification becomes Undetectable. lots for ladies parking 24/7. eco-label shelves. sustainability tags. PrEP pills ready for delivery imported from Bangkok. thank you for not using plastic bags. 0% installments. Automatic doors. sparkling like bubble butts. […]
The Strike of Hunger
by Prasant Kumar Mishra, translated from the Odia by Debasish Mishra
Madhu parked his rickshaw in front of his cottage and laid himself over the veranda. Startled, Chameli asked, “Are you not feeling well today? Won’t you take the rickshaw?” Madhu blabbered, “They have called for a strike today.” With apparent curiosity, Chameli inquired, “What’s that?” “Everything, I mean everything — the market, the transport, the […]
Review: Fatemeh Shams’s Hopscotch
translated from the Persian by Armen Davoudian
by Mahdi Ganjavi
In The Beginning, There Was Translation Hopscotch (Falschrum Books and Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024) is a collection of 13 poems in Persian by Fatemeh Shams, accompanied by their English translations by Armen Davoudian, and a series of evocative photographs by Stefan Maneval. This collection delves deeply into the themes of exile, memory, and the internal […]
CITY HONEY [STADTHONIG]
by Björn Bicker, Translated by Neil Blackadder
NOTE: Hanau, a city near Frankfurt, was the site of a terrorist shooting in 2020; the gunman targeted people with an immigrant background. Two earlier far-right terrorist attacks took place during Oktoberfest in Munich in 1980, and in 2016 at the Olympia shopping mall, also in Munich. When you’ve got reality Who needs to […]
You Can Never Drive to Taipei City 開車進不了臺北城
by Hsieh Chih-wei
translated from the Chinese by Tony Hao
What is the hardest place to drive to? “It’s not the edges of the world,” said Father, “It’s the place you commute to every day. You can never drive to Taipei City.” Father used to be a construction worker. A construction worker never took weekends off. A day without rain was a workday, and […]
A sweet memory of summer and Poem for the body politic
by Kacper Bartczak
Translated from the Polish by Mark Tardi
the bright panels of the horizon box are within reach
in full light the organism enters a state of self-emission
*The Trip to the East of France, An Excerpt*
by Christine Angot
Translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer
I met my father in a Strasbourg hotel, I wouldn’t know how to identify it now. The building had about five floors. In front there were a few parking spots. You went in through a glass door. The registration was on the left. In the back there was an elevator. Wooden stairs with a carpet […]
