MAYDAY

Half Sonnet, Doubled
by Mark Tardi

Contributed By:

Mark Tardi, man with microphone in front of black background.
Photo by Joanna Głodek

If he’d had a little more time, he could refine his theology, could catch a falling knife. With just a little more time, he could invent teeth & three new dance moves. He could tell you he loved a tiger & there’d be no doubt. With a bit more time, he could explain electrolocation & the Continuum Hypothesis, how bears cause all our weather. With a few more seconds, he could defend Van Damme’s filmography, how, when it comes down to it, ailments generate one another. If only there were time, he could thank you for the perfect barbecue, ping-pong, & all the times those cowboy boots came in handy.

MARK TARDI is a writer and translator whose recent awards include a 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Grant and a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Translation fellowship. His most recent books are The Circus of Trust, and translations of The Squatters’ Gift by Robert Rybicki and Faith in Strangers by Katarzyna Szaulińska. His writing and translations can be found (or are forthcoming) in Poetry, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Interim, Guernica, Cagibi, Tupelo Quarterly, Full Stop, and elsewhere. Viscera: Eight Voices from Poland is forthcoming from Litmus Press in 2024. He is on faculty at the University of Łódź.

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