Day is a cooling ember. Before it gets dark as the well that engulfs the sun and retains its water, I will describe fractals with my finger over the ashy skin of dusk. Seashells swept away at night damp like an evaporated sea, like an opaque spill on a blue tablecloth covered in white crumbs. […]
Translation
Saturday Evening by Clarisse Francillon (translated from French by Michelle Bailat-Jones)
[Editors’ Note: Clarisse Francillon was awarded a special prize in 1943 by the Swiss Schiller Foundation. This story was published by the foundation as a “novella” in 1944.] “The burgundy is more dressy, but the navy, of course…” Rita tilted the mirror. The woman placed her foot on the ground and the suede […]
6.60 by Martial (translated from Latin by David Macey)
Rome lauds, loves, and sings my little books. I am in every pocket, every hand. Behold: she blushes, pales, dazes, yawns, looks sick. That’s what I want! Now I’m my own fan. Laudat, amat, cantat nostros mea Roma libellos, meque sinus omnes, me manus omnis habet. Ecce rubet quidam, pallet, stupet, oscitat, odit. […]
12.13 by Martial (translated from Latin by David Macey)
Among the rich, anger’s no rarity: hatred comes cheaper than charity. Genus, Aucte, lucri divites habent iram: odisse quam donare vilius constat. Return to table of contents for Issue 12 Winter 2018.
1.28 by Martial (translated from Latin by David Macey)
“He reeks of last night’s wine!” That’s off the mark. He drinks until dawn clarifies the dark. Hesterno fetere mero qui credit Acerram, fallitur: in lucem semper Acerra bibit. Return to table of contents for Issue 12 Winter 2018.
fasting: recourse by Martyna Buliżańska (translated from Polish by Peter Burzynski)
(was there a war here?; a war like a rhapsody?) I rub away any traces; bald biblical women keep giving birth to me. I see that they stick their hands out the window and wave to passing ships. In this place I set the trap —this includes Kolbuszowa.1 By way of the barren Jewish fields […]
rubella, misha by Martyna Buliżańska (translated from Polish by Peter Burzynski)
(sometimes I still write to Twiggy) Misha, if you only saw how dad was hanging up coats yesterday— it was June, we pitted cherries and mother had scratches around her mouth. hands inside her skirt swelled like eyes, though their eyelids could not gather the mold in the bedroom—a train’s sleeping car, gently rocking on […]
Statues by Sergio Ballouk (translated from Portuguese by Julian Cola)
how many statues of bandits extermination commanders forest caps? how many? how many street names of wealth mongers squares and viaducts of those who despised the people? how many? how many rotten within, bearing an upright stench, as if standing drains guts and venom? how many? how many are still watching us waiting for their […]
Landfill by Sergio Ballouk (translated from Portuguese by Julian Cola)
Behold, everybody focus your attention from the truck’s shadow hauling pallets behold the old landfill (extinct for so many years) resurges so does the ravine it resurges lake tin reed an old sieve hawk… people spanning the depths of luck they all resurge I hear brats shouting in high pursuit of the sweet truck the […]
“A simple HIV test…” by Dionisio Cañas (translated from Spanish by Consuelo Arias)
A simple HIV test, a memory of the luminous countryside, a time before this fear, the lightning bolts of love, the morning after, the glistening dawn . . . all we wanted was a bit of tenderness. Happiness, just one more crime. Poetry instead of theft, life cut short in each encounter. We loved so […]
