After work, I lock up and slip out the back door. My jacket smells like coffee and onions and some third unidentifiable musk. I should do laundry. I text Tippi: you off yet? and immediately regret it. I haven’t eaten since this morning but I snack on my cuticles—that should hold me over. I scroll, searching for an extra sad song and feeling stupid for it. Tippi texts back: no, come get a drink.
I sit at the bar, coat draped over the stool beneath me. Tippi’s wearing the crewneck I got her for Hanukkah last year—it’s royal blue and says BUCATINI in white, collegiate letters. She’s pouring a lavender drink through a strainer into a coup glass, probably an aviation. I served her an aviation two years ago when she’d just moved here.
“Purple rain?” she’d asked when I set it before her.
“No.”
She took a sip.
“You’re right.” She nodded, no further questions.
Now, she approaches me, roles reversed.
“G&T?” She holds up an etched crystal glass.
“Yes, please.”
“Still snowing?” Tippi sets the drink on a cardboard coaster and leans onto her elbows. A blunt lock of hair dangles in line with her cheekbone.
“Sure is,” I say. “Can’t stop that lake-effect snow.”
“Sure can’t,” she says. “You sleeping at the new place tonight?”
“Sure am.” We smile for a moment, forgetting the last month.
“Need help moving anything tomorrow?”
“I don’t think that’d be super helpful, Tip.”
She holds her hands up. “I’ll try to stay out of the way,” she says.
Three free G&Ts later, I’m struggling with the keys at my new apartment door. I brought one carload last night—whatever I could fit: empty trash bin, mom’s old trunk filled with artwork tucked between socks and underwear, rolled rug, camping gear, a pair of vintage ceramic lamps Tippi gave me for my birthday.
I sit on the floor in the tiny apartment with high ceilings and eat cold cheese pizza straight from the box. I don’t have any plates yet. I lick my fingers and wipe them on my jeans.
I unroll my sleeping bag and lie flat, gazing at the ceiling. It’s beautiful with whipped cream crown molding and an intricate rose in the center that reminds me of my girlhood bedroom. I’ve never lived alone before. Tippi helped me find the spot—she said it made more sense for her to stay in our old place because she makes more money. I turn my head and watch fat snowflakes pelting the window.
We’d first kissed by the lake. She’d texted me that she couldn’t sleep. We’d only known each other for a week or two—she’d come into the bar, back when I worked there. Just moved here from Phoenix, she’d said. I literally just came from the airport. She was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Have I got a cocktail for you, I’d told her.
I couldn’t sleep that night either, so we drove to the shore. People who’ve never seen the Great Lakes don’t realize just how vast they are, how many ships they’ve swallowed. When winter reaches its coldest depths, the waves near the shoreline freeze over, caught mid-crash in crumbling formations like the Pacific coast. We climbed down from crunching dunes to the frozen beach. It was well after midnight but the moon was out, reflecting across ice and snow, which seemed to glow in its own right. Wind burned our cheeks and Tippi grabbed my hand.
“This is kind of crazy,” she said, “and I’m not expecting you to respond, but I just want to tell you—” She somehow made me feel nostalgic minute-by-minute. “I love you.”
In the morning, my hips ache from sleeping on the hardwood. My temple thrums lightly from the gin, my face taut and puffed. I crawl to the galley kitchen bisecting the apartment and dig through a paper bag—goddamn Cream of Wheat. Tippi packed the bag for me, sorting through our shared pantry. She knows I hate the gritty hot cereal. Out of stubbornness, I hunt for a saucepan.
As I whisk, I draft a text in my head: can’t believe you passed off your trash breakfast slop. I wonder if she did it on purpose, hoping I’d say something, or as a reminder—a wisp of her whenever I open the pantry. I toss the box in the trash.
In the front room, I stoop on the rolled-up rug before the windows, saucepan and spoon in hand. The world outside is bleached pure white—trees and streets and sidewalks coated in snow while flurries float in midair.
I think of Tippi on the beach, blunt bob backlit in the moonlight, saying she loved me. No one had ever paid me much attention—certainly no one like Tippi. I’d told her I loved her too, and I meant it. I meant it when I said we should move in together three months in, when I got her a job at the bar and they let me go two weeks later. I meant it when she drifted, spent time with new friends, stayed out later, “forgot” to text me back. I meant it when I walked in on her in the bathroom at a house show, arms wrapped around someone else, mouth searching a neck that wasn’t mine: but, I love you.
I spoon cooled porridge into my mouth. It’s as bland and gritty as I remember. I watch the swirling snow—that unpredictable lake-effect blizzard, wondering if I’m the cold front soaring over top or the warm water pushing from below.
Sarah Lynn Hurd is a writer and poet from Michigan. She has recent work in Fictive Dream, HAD, Bear Review, and elsewhere. Her writing often explores relationships, loss, nostalgia, and perception. She earned her BA in creative writing and English literature from Grand Valley State University, and she’s currently attending UW-Madison for her MFA in fiction. Stop by sarlynh.com to visit her online.
to sounds behind the ear, so that the father’s ashes
speak bones and milk speak seeds and obedience
the piecework of hours, where the unsaid breathes
Ligaments tighten the knuckles
Balbuceo y revelación hasta la línea final
El hielo sopla en los campos
silenciados los muros del tiempo el agua corre
traza el camino la pregunta
ésta supura
Horadaciones: no esquirlas huellas
Objetos fuera de casa
los que habitan dentro escuchan
sonidos detrás del oído para que las cenizas del padre
hablen huesos y leche hablen semillas y obediencia
destajos de horas donde lo no dicho respira
Ligamentos anudan nudillos
Superimpositions
Word written over another word
and another
Superimpositions
We say what’s subtle so that the scaffold—the code—bursts into flower:
fire and flow:
strip the message naked, in a million splinters of time
The smell, the search
[The line, arguing that the line is space, tremor where something happens to the language. Frame for a caesura. Space where a pointed silence opens. Syntax and caesura make the line. Form that insinuates the voice and explores the interstices of language and body: Solution to the problem of the furtive line.]
Superposiciones
Escritura sobre otra escritura
otra
Superposiciones
Se dice lo sutil para que el entramado—código—se abra en flor:
fuego y secuencia:
desnudo el mensaje en millones de esquirlas de tiempo
Olfato y rastreo
[La línea, argumentando que la línea es espacio, tremor donde algo le sucede al lenguaje. Marco para cesura. Espacio donde se abre en punta un silencio. Sintaxis y cesura hacen la línea. Forma que insinúa la voz y explora los intersticios del lenguaje y el cuerpo: Solución al problema de la línea furtiva.]
Aftershock
Pretend there is nothing in the slap of the voice, or let it smack and bounce on the wall and/or the body. Mute. Strident. The rumble from streets and rooms. Or auric bursts from a protracted earthquake. Saturn eludes its own gravity. / Anthuriums and their cadmium bracts announce it all: each winter the fire will obliterate its name.
Réplica
Simular que en el golpe de voz no hay nada o dejar que pegue y rebote sobre el muro y/o el cuerpo. Mudez. Estridencia. Ruido sordo de calles y estancias. O estallidos áuricos de un temblor que sostiene. Saturno esquiva su propia gravedad. / Los anturios y sus brácteas cadmio, lo anuncian todo: cada invierno arrasará el fuego su nombre.
Translator’s Note:
The poems in this series are sections from the book Áurica Speculari by Rocío Cerón. I met Cerón and discovered her poems through the Bilingual Reading Series conducted by Montclair State University originated in Cerón’s album of sonic poetry, Speculari. The poems in this breathtaking album flow through rivers of natural and electronic sound. By listening to Speculari, I observed that its stream of sound is actually similar to how I read a poem in print. While reading, I hear the poem mentally. What I hear meanders into and out of sound and silence in my reading environment. Noticing this, I realized that my attention to sound and silence was paramount, if the book were to be reborn in translation.
To flesh out this insight, I relied on three primary techniques in my translation. First, I let aural quality and tonality drive my choices in English. A case in point is my decision, in many instances, to use active voice in English for passive voice “se” constructions in Spanish. These passive-voice constructions in Spanish have a far more vigorous quality than the enervated, disembodied English passive of the infamous “mistakes were made.”
Second, I tried to use English diction to capture the tension, ever-present in Cerón’s work, between what Ludwig Wittgenstein might call the “logical space“ of grammar and the sonic “games” of speech within life’s wider auditory milieu. This observation helped me consider superimpositions of language games upon each other and upon logical scaffolding, as well as the superimposition of the art styles of European colonizers upon the art of Indigenous people in the Americas. In the poem “Superposiciones/Superimpositions,” for example, the processes of superimposing text—such as writing, rewriting, and the creation of palimpsests—”strip the message naked, in a million splinters of time.” The implication here, I believe, is that the core message and logic of an idea is fully revealed when multiple forms of language, and the cultures they reflect, can play with the idea over time.
Third, I decided to let the tradition of Anglo-Saxon prosody shape the translation of the poems in Áurica Speculari. Old-English verse is marked by strong sounds and silences, through alliteration, caesura, and forceful rhythms; these features chime with specific aspects of Cerón’s poems, including her use of intra-line spacing. More to the point, Anglo-Saxon prosody is closely related to earlier oral (and so, aural) poetry and storytelling. As such, the tradition mirrors the focus on sound, hearing, and listening that is the very core of Áurica Speculari.
Rocío Cerón is a Mexico City-based poet, essayist, and visual-sound artist. Cerón is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Nudo vortex/Vortex Knot (Literal, 2015), Borealis (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016), Imperio/Empire (Ediciones Monte Carmelo, 2008), and Diorama (Phoneme Media, EUA, 2014; translated by Anna Rosenwong, winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award, Rochester University). Cerón’s sound, visual, and performance poetry has been exhibited in international venues including the Southbank Centre, London, the Pompidou Museum, Paris, and MOMA, Mexico. Julio Ortega, one of Latin America’s most acclaimed literary critics, chose her as one of the best women poets of her generation. rocioceron.com. elmartillopress.com/rocioceron.
Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. She recently published a collection of translations and critical essays, Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila (Monkfish, 2024). Delibovi’s work has appeared in After the Art, Apple Valley Review, Ballast, Ekstasis, Noon, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, and many other journals. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2020 Best American Essays notable essayist, a 2024 Best of the Net nominee, and co-winner of the 2023 Hueston Woods Poetry Contest. Delibovi is consulting poetry editor at the literary e-zine Cable Street. danadelibovi.wordpress.com.
You turn the sun and midnight into my head so I, from that sunlight, can take a photo that’s not been seen until you shine on the blades of axes. What do you do with wild animals? With such sharpness of mind that reminds the clouds, harass me and crack open my illness. Manliness comes from my bread outside and cries in the tall metro but finds happiness from spilt grapes, wriggles with a falcon’s face and its smile is aggressive. What does it cause in the wake of all that all that need for goodness in me that becomes the fulfilment of wickedness? Your wolf’s voice elongates the desert. I am exposed to you and the imperfect forms are praised with ultimate perfection. I am afraid of the teeth of my now of the news of olives dripping in the middle of the bathroom — The tranquility of your wolf! Oh the tranquility of your wolf. Let’s decide! and whatever compels me right now to say to you by the name of… a dot on this name… a dot on anything more ruined, I am you a dot on catastrophe, that only thinks of one heart. The sound of a long letter vav spreads through the sky my tragedy shakes … the actors directed by the night and the actors directed by the spectre and a dot by the name that says: — in this army the most open fire wounds are yours on the coasts of Suleiman’s oud, they slaughter shadows like you who came with them to my bed I am so much a part of you that I had a hand in your self-betrayal
1
3
A truth in change the table and mankind’s places are swallowed from the softness of ash and the aging of the letter lam they were nine people and darkness was pouring from thighs and kisses the party was searching for you and after something appeared midair from the woman’s necklace the sprinkling of nausea on the lavatory’s rock count me from your right-hand side — four — five clean handkerchiefs and a condolence shake in the branch my fearing of discovery underlying nothing let nothing leave me to myself as closed doors do, nothing! Let me sit on a chair untie my plaits into the letter alef into an alef a calm alef (question mark) everything is there an afternoon nap in Mordad emerging from the nap and going to objects you like. Question mark everything is there. Sprinkle me piece by piece I spin crazily in circles of the room do you see them? and lines the butterfly draws on the shoulder until light until light kills itself on an object words that don’t shortly spew from the letter kaf — Oh god! — Oh god! Shake my graves Thursday going to the café at four shopping in the fruit and veg market the pupil’s explosion in a square of the moon and these things that are in my mouth.
3
6
I have occupied all my time go pick a reason from psychology textbooks and piss towards the trees. It’s not a critic of Russia that idealises your hands it’s not this question mark look the same question mark I had written on my thighs you! I had glued thunder and lightning at the end of the courtyard to a nail I was afraid because of the nail. I had dirtied my father and kept saying among the folds of trees you! You had your own Solmaz and your caressing fingers had their own Solmaz beauty removed the reptile from all over you this child wanted your DNA this child on the nail did not understand yesterday they said to underneath my thighs: — father! They stormed my men and said: — is this bouquet schizophrenic?
You’ll find them more in their lies, this is an implicit agreement again speak and this child… after private lessons in sky, I mastered it. I wash people’s jolts that sociolo -gy -gy -gy and the horizons of lands -gy -gy -gy yesterday their beating promised to no longer draw on the wall of pale words this house’s rent swallows pills I accept the shit and while under my fingernails… this house’s rent lets them curse the conclusions of my memory they carry me to days I haven’t forgiven we didn’t understand each other and I love you! I hate you! I love you. Between bad and worse I’m a treasure, a concept that finishes your cigarettes — hurry! Swap me for a littler anxiety, hit your tongue, hold SHIFT and to the sky in the window be compliant make me into a son of a bitch, let my attention turn into this serration, hold shift so my chador wears the air and whores out the word. How my child buys what’s between my two hands it was the opening ceremony I looked at them how in that restaurant I looked at them the ground in the background of the soldier becomes an ideologue and this child is invisible on their table contracts are a collection of human’s words and this child their type two diabetes is invisible the Google search for Chaharmahalian and the deep grooves on my face don’t let me smoke and they no longer let me how crying is the only thing left of my humanity. I hope for the mirror’s shapes my smile for the button that never falls I had been fortunate I had been cursed for being fortunate. Mind your own business -gy -gy -gy — me? Let the Lord completely rot! They poured into the folds of lands father was regarded as a fascist appendage the women prayed and this child has taken all my time in solitary confinement by drawing on the wall of pale words.
6
8
From jinns, from those who are compelled and the left ovary, they do not have day, night, the railway of colliding trains in cold wars and in the nostalgia of Ameneh’s[1] thalamus that bring casualties from their collective dances, from a finger that in darkness takes a dream among the cows, from the unconscious of Bashar al-Assad into moaning and layers of horizon whose colours leap outside the factory, from there I should have asked for a god and the relationship between the colours in my hair like a yes, has been abandoned. They have invoked you with intense descriptions with the repetition of this sea, the thunderbolt becomes a spell over the city over farms who know the number of the hungry and with many eyes the thunderbolt possesses the body of ants on night’s cliffs. Let the swelling rain turn like thunder you watch over the crack and unfasten the eyelids of diamonds the eyelid of someone’s siren is burning the siren of opium poppies fruitful in the genetics of my male orgasms the siren of my capitalist Cancer that under immigration law eats cheap hearts and rare blood the ambulance siren of a crushed Kia Sportage in whose news I am decomposed with my shoulder blade of yesterday I struggle to bring it down from that same spear onto myself. I have poured myself over your position with exploding eyes a liver in teeth and a knee dripped onto a shirt you pass over my arms to your name you become summer and autumn who apart from me has been so afraid of praising the mountains? Who apart from me is nearer than the temple to you with a child in an embrace and a dagger in love that is nocturnal, hopeless and believes in the flowering of corn in snow? Was that praise yours that relocated the sun to the farm? My moving adrenaline a beginning I didn’t see bringing you into being. You came into being from the blind, father cured your eyes with a white pupil and are becoming undone with my becoming a little prettier. Take me away from this planet’s intelligence design a particular exile for when I tune the waistcoat we must surpass these standards learn the levels of access to blood and the colour given to Dubai’s structures comes from the exposure of moaning at last I have arrived at stronger skeletal joints the cellular mutations are inscribed into my design and statistical headings, in which they have bound a city to bullets, was that agony yours Lord or do collective massacres yawn in my child? Let me carry a burden from hungry cells and limit the amount of nudity to society’s measures. Father standing at the limit of the cells for my sight, smell and touch a Syrian child has given the gun towards the orange of your pupil amazed, fortunate and smiling at their intermittent measles. Just like me, who with the same brain grows thirsty I see the mountain that’s taller than you and the sea that reflects only the eternal flight of birds. In the same way I also with the same brain transform into something far away as if you could point at me only from far away.
[1]Ameneh Bahrami is an Iranian woman who was left horrifically disfigured after an acid attack in 2004 that was committed as an act of patriarchal and religious violence.
8
Translator’s Note
To translate a poem well, you must admire it.
When I first encountered the work of Atefeh Chaharmahalian while researching the Woman, Life, Freedom protests of September 2022, during which Atefeh was arrested for her participation, I was immediately struck with admiration for her visceral and surreal lines. As I read these poems in a local café, the sound of coffee machines and chatter dimmed and my eyes widened to make room for the panoply of images, registers, and expressive possibilities they provided. After several readings alone and with my Iranian friends, I plucked up the courage to cold email Chaharmahalian, declaring my love for these poems, and with such generosity, she entrusted me, a complete stranger, with her work.
While reminiscent of the work of Nima Yooshij, Chaharmahalian’s poems function according to dream logic since for her, ‘it is still the unconscious that issues the command for every line I write’. These poems also invoke, albeit in a more compressed form, ‘spacement poetry’ (she’r hajm), where through a series of narratively unrelated lines they create an atmosphere that deeply affects the reader.
As a result, these poems are uncontainable. They are full of movement: of being pulled, dragged, taken, relocated, or placed far away. Moving and transforming, non-linearly, across the scales of body horror, societal pressures, and intense family structures, they attempt, unsuccessfully, to escape the containment of fear, death, and darkness. Imperatives act like defiant declarations, repetitions as false starts, and enjambment like a promise of escape that in the proceeding lines ‘kills itself on an object’.
I therefore decided not to impose a conclusive narrative onto these poems — to do so would contain the uncontainable — but to consider them as a series of unfurling images. I then jumped across the poems to find fleeting connections and to ensure consistency in word choice and phrasing, only occasionally changing my translation of the same word (e.g. shakl – form, shape) to maintain scansion or sound patterns in the English. My objective was to create a visceral and uncontainable poetics that matched my first impression when reading the Farsi.
A translator can feel obliged to produce a translation that is intelligible to the target audience, but some of Chaharmahalian’s uncontainable lines can be obscure. I attempted many iterations of these lines, and with suggestions from my Iranian friends and the poet herself, I have landed on the following translations. I thank Chaharmahalian and my Iranian friends for their patience, support, and illuminations.
For clarity, I did sometimes repeat the subjects of verbs, change the word order, and even add words not found in the original, such as ‘ambulance siren’ in poem 8. For the phrase ‘sarbāztarin-e zaxmhā’ in poem 1, which puns on sarbāz (soldier) and zaxm-e bāz (open wound), I translated it as ‘the most open fire wounds’, which as a phrase does exist separately in Farsi (ātash-rā bāz kardan, to open fire); I felt using it here relays both the military associations and the openness of the wound.
Moreover, Farsi grammar does not reflect gender where u’ can mean he, she, they, it and -sh can mean his, her, theirs, its. Since the subject changes so often in these poems, rather than curtailing this ambiguity, unless obvious through context, I maintained it by using the gender-neutral they, them, their. This can be seen in poem 6 where I use they, them, their to refer to ‘this child’ (in bache) and in poem 1 where the addressee ‘came with them to my bed’.
Having translated these uncontainable poems, I understand that they can only be grasped tentatively as disparate elements rather than as works you can comfortably read in one sitting. For Gayatri Spivak, translation is an erotic act: one must know the text intimately to be able to translate it. With these poems, the intimacy has not been an all-containing hug, but the touches of a lover on your arm, your hand, or the ‘lines [drawn] on the shoulder’. These touches are electrifying, fleeting, at times disconcerting, and although I cannot hold or contain them, I am still greatly moved by the uncontainable, expansive horizons they provide their reader in the darkest of moments.
Atefeh Chaharmahalian, a poet, writer, and literary activist, is one of the prominent contemporary voices in Persian literature. She is also known as an advocate of freedom of expression and the rights of writers. Former Secretary of the Iranian Writers’ Association, Chaharmahalian has always strived to preserve freedom of thought and expression in literature. However, due to her cultural and literary activities, she has faced various pressures and restrictions. Today, Atefeh Chaharmahalian, as a writer in exile, continues her literary activities and keeps the voice of freedom and truth alive through poetry and writing.
George Reiner is a poet, translator, and writer based in Ramsgate, UK, whose work can be found in & Change, The Madrid Review, The Still Point, Pamenar Press, and Green Linden Press. You can contact George by emailing him at [email protected]
A week has one Tuesday. A year, fifty-two. A war has a lot of Tuesdays.
That Tuesday at school, they were practising their capital letters. The teacher was wearing thick glasses with no rim. They were so thick they softened her gaze. Forty-two girls copied from the board:
FRITZ THE GREAT HAD A TIN-CAN MUG. BIG BERTHA’S SHELLS SHOOK PARIS. IN WARTIME, ALL FATHERS ARE SOLDIERS.
Ulla stretched her tongue all the way up to her nose. The teacher prodded her. There’s no ‘J’ in ‘soldier’, Ulla. It’s spelt ‘D’, ‘I’, ‘E’. How often must I tell you? In her book, she made a cross next to Ulla’s name. You’ll write that out for me ten times by tomorrow, and no mistakes, understood? Yes Miss, said Ulla and thought: silly old four-eyes. In the yard, crows gobbled down chunks of stale bread.
That Tuesday Lieutenant Ehlers was called to the unit commander. You’ll need to get rid of that red scarf, Ehlers. Herr Major? Well, Ehlers, they don’t like that sort of thing in the Second. I’m being sent to Second Company? Yes, and they don’t like that sort of thing. It just won’t do. The Second are very proper, you know. You wear that red scarf and you’ll get nothing but cold shoulders. Captain Hesse didn’t wear that sort of thing. Hesse’s wounded? No, he’s reported himself unfit for duty. Wasn’t feeling too peachy, he said. Since he’s become Captain, he’s been a bit slack, old Hesse. Beats me. Used to be so proper. Nothing doing – Ehlers, see to it you keep the Second in check. Hesse trained them well. And you’ll take that scarf off, understood? ‘Course, Herr Major. And mind they’re careful with the ciggies. Any half-decent sniper must get an itchy trigger finger, seeing those glowworms flitting about. We had five shot in the head last week. So you just be careful. Yes, sir. On the way to Second Company Lieutenant Ehlers took off his red scarf. He lit a cigarette. Company Commander Ehlers, he said out loud. There was a shot.
That Tuesday Herr Hansen said to Fräulein Severin: It’s time to send Hesse another parcel, Sevvie dear. Something to smoke, a few snacks. Something to read. A pair of gloves or some such. Our boys are having a damn hard winter out there. And I know what that’s like, yes sir, I do. Hölderlin poems, Herr Hansen? Oh, Sevvie, don’t be silly. No, it needs to be light. Wilhelm Busch, that sort of thing. Hesse was always one for a good time. Laughs a lot, you know that. My God, Sevvie, how that boy Hesse can laugh! He certainly can, said Fräulein Severin.
That Tuesday they stretchered Captain Hesse into the Delousing Station. There was a sign on the door:
GENERAL OR GRENADIER, THE RULE’S THE SAME – YOUR HAIR STAYS HERE.
He was shaved. The medic had long, thin fingers like spiders’ legs, a little raw at the knuckles. They rubbed something that smelt like pharmacy into his skin. Then the spiders’ legs felt for his pulse and wrote in a thick book: Temperature: 41.6. Pulse: 116. Unconscious. Suspected typhus. The medic closed the book. Smolensk Isolation Hospital was printed on the front. And underneath: Fourteen-hundred beds. The stretcher-bearers picked up the stretcher. On the staircase, Hesse’s head rolled out from under the blanket, swung back and forth with every step. His shaved head. When he’d always laughed at those baldy Russians. One of the stretcher-bearers sniffed.
That Tuesday Frau Hesse called on her neighbour. As the door opened, she waved a letter. He’s a Captain now. Captain and Company Commander, he says. And it’s minus 40 out. Nine days, the letter took. To Frau Captain Hesse, look, he’s written it there, at the top. She held the letter up. But her neighbour didn’t look. Minus 40, she said. Those poor boys. Minus 40.
That Tuesday a Lieutenant Colonel in the Medical Corps asked the Chief Medical Officer at Smolensk Isolation Hospital: How many a day? Half a dozen. Horrendous, said the Lieutenant Colonel. Yes. Horrendous, said the Chief Medical Officer. They looked away from one another as they spoke.
That Tuesday they played The Magic Flute. Frau Hesse wore her red lipstick.
That Tuesday Sister Elizabeth wrote to her parents: Without God, this would be unbearable. But she stood up when the doctor came. He stooped as though he were carrying the whole of Russia through the ward. Shall I give him another dose? asked the Sister. No, said the doctor. He spoke very quietly, as people do when they’re ashamed. They carried Captain Hesse away. There was a thud outside. All this crashing about. Why can’t they put the dead down gently? They dash them to the ground, every time. Said someone. And his neighbour sang quietly:
Hippety hip, hooray, yippee For our dashing boys, the infantree!
The doctor went from bed to bed. Every day. Day and night. All day. And through the night. Stooping. He carried the whole of Russia through the ward. Outside, two stretcher-bearers tripped away with an empty stretcher. Number four, said one. He had a sniffle.
That Tuesday in the evening, Ulla sat down with her schoolbook and printed carefully:
IN WARTIME, ALL FATHERS ARE SOLDIERS. IN WARTIME, ALL FATHERS ARE SOLDIERS.
Ten times, she wrote it. In capital letters. And spelt ‘D’, ‘I’, ‘E’.
An diesem Dienstag
Die Woche hat einen Dienstag. Das Jahr ein halbes Hundert. Der Krieg hat viele Dienstage.
An diesem Dienstag übten sie in der Schule die großen Buchstaben. Die Lehrerin hatte eine Brille mit dicken Gläsern. Die hatten keinen Rand. Sie waren so dick, daß die Augen ganz leise aussahen. Zweiundvierzig Mädchen saßen vor der schwarzen Tafel und schrieben mit großen Buchstaben:
DER ALTE FRITZ HATTE EINEN TRINKBECHER AUS BLECH. DIE DICKE BERTA SCHOSS BIS PARIS. IM KRIEGE SIND ALLE VÄTER SOLDAT.
Ulla kam mit der Zungenspitze bis an die Nase. Da stieß die Lehrerin sie an. Du hast Krieg mit ch geschrieben, Ulla. Krieg wird mit g geschrieben. G wie Grube. Wie oft habe ich das schon gesagt. Die Lehrerin nahm ein Buch und machte einen Haken hinter Ullas Namen. Zu morgen schreibst du den Satz zehnmal ab, schön sauber, verstehst du? Ja, sagte Ulla und dachte: Die mit ihrer Brille. Auf dem Schulhof fraßen die Nebelkrähen das weggeworfene Brot.
An diesem Dienstag wurde Leutnant Ehlers zum Bataillonskommandeur befohlen. Sie müssen den roten Schal abnehmen, Herr Ehlers. Herr Major? Doch, Ehlers. In der Zweiten ist sowas nicht beliebt. Ich komme in die zweite Kompanie? Ja, und die lieben sowas nicht. Da kommen Sie nicht mit durch. Die Zweite ist an das Korrekte gewöhnt. Mit dem roten Schal läßt die Kompanie Sie glatt stehen. Hauptmann Hesse trug sowas nicht. Ist Hesse verwundet? Nee, er hat sich krank gemeldet. Fühlte sich nicht gut, sagte er. Seit er Hauptmann ist, ist er ein bisschen flau geworden, der Hesse. Versteh ich nicht. War sonst immer so korrekt. Na ja, Ehlers, sehen Sie zu, daß Sie mit der Kompanie fertig werden. Hesse hat die Leute gut erzogen. Und den Schal nehmen Sie ab, klar? ’türlich, Herr Major. Und passen Sie auf, daß die Leute mit den Zigaretten vorsichtig sind. Da muß ja jedem anständigen Scharfschützen der Zeigefinger jucken, wenn er diese Glühwürmchen herumschwirren sieht. Vorige Woche hatten wir fünf Kopfschüsse. Also passen Sie ein bisschen auf, ja? Jawohl, Herr Major. Auf dem Wege zur zweiten Kompanie nahm Leutnant Ehlers den roten Schal ab. Er steckte eine Zigarette an. Kompanieführer Ehlers, sagte er laut. Da schoss es.
An diesem Dienstag sagte Herr Hansen zu Fräulein Severin: Wir müssen dem Hesse auch mal wieder was schicken, Severinchen. Was zu rauchen, was zu knabbern. Ein bisschen Literatur. Ein Paar Handschuhe oder sowas. Die Jungens haben einen verdammt schlechten Winter draußen. Ich kenne das. Vielen Dank. Hölderlin vielleicht, Herr Hansen? Unsinn, Severinchen, Unsinn. Nein, ruhig ein bisschen freundlicher. Wilhelm Busch oder so. Hesse war doch mehr für das Leichte. Lacht doch gern, das wissen Sie doch. Mein Gott, Severinchen, was kann dieser Hesse lachen! Ja, das kann er, sagte Fräulein Severin.
An diesem Dienstag trugen sie Hauptmann Hesse auf einer Bahre in die Entlausungsanstalt. An der Tür war ein Schild:
OB GENERAL, OB GRENADIER: DIE HAARE BLEIBEN HIER.
Er wurde geschoren. Der Sanitäter hatte lange dünne Finger. Wie Spinnenbeine. An den Knöcheln waren sie etwas gerötet. Sie rieben ihn mit etwas ab, das roch nach Apotheke. Dann fühlten die Spinnenbeine nach seinem Puls und schrieben in ein dickes Buch: Temperatur 41,6. Puls 116. Ohne Besinnung. Fleckfieberverdacht. Der Sanitäter machte das dicke Buch zu. Seuchenlazarett Smolensk stand da drauf. Und darunter: Vierzehnhundert Betten. Die Träger nahmen die Bahre hoch. Auf der Treppe pendelte sein Kopf aus den Decken heraus und immer hin und her bei jeder Stufe. Und kurzgeschoren. Und dabei hatte er immer über die Russen gelacht. Der eine Träger hatte Schnupfen.
An diesem Dienstag klingelte Frau Hesse bei ihrer Nachbarin. Als die Tür aufging, wedelte sie mit dem Brief. Er ist Hauptmann geworden. Hauptmann und Kompaniechef, schreibt er. Und sie haben über 40 Grad Kälte. Neun Tage hat der Brief gedauert. An Frau Hauptmann Hesse hat er oben drauf geschrieben. Sie hielt den Brief hoch. Aber die Nachbarin sah nicht hin. 40 Grad Kälte, sagte sie, die armen Jungs. 40 Grad Kälte.
An diesem Dienstag fragte der Oberfeldarzt den Chefarzt des Seuchenlazarettes Smolensk: Wieviel sind es jeden Tag? Ein halbes Dutzend. Scheußlich, sagte der Oberfeldarzt. Ja, scheußlich, sagte der Chefarzt. Dabei sahen sie sich nicht an.
An diesem Dienstag spielten sie die Zauberflöte. Frau Hesse hatte sich die Lippen rot gemacht.
An diesem Dienstag schrieb Schwester Elisabeth an ihre Eltern: Ohne Gott hält man das gar nicht durch. Aber als der Unterarzt kam, stand sie auf. Er ging so krumm, als trüge er ganz Russland durch den Saal. Soll ich ihm noch was geben? fragte die Schwester. Nein, sagte der Unterarzt. Er sagte das so leise, als ob er sich schämte. Dann trugen sie Hauptmann Hesse hinaus. Draußen polterte es. Die bumsen immer so. Warum können sie die Toten nicht langsam hinlegen. Jedesmal lassen sie sie so auf die Erde bumsen. Das sagte einer. Und sein Nachbar sang leise:
Zicke zacke juppheidi Schneidig ist die Infanterie.
Der Unterarzt ging von Bett zu Bett. Jeden Tag. Tag und Nacht. Tagelang. Nächte durch. Krumm ging er. Er trug ganz Russland durch den Saal. Draußen stolperten zwei Krankenträger mit einer leeren Bahre davon. Nummer 4, sagte der eine. Er hatte Schnupfen.
An diesem Dienstag saß Ulla abends und malte in ihr Schreibheft mit großen Buchstaben:
IM KRIEG SIND ALLE VÄTER SOLDAT. IM KRIEG SIND ALLE VÄTER SOLDAT.
Zehnmal schrieb sie das. Mit großen Buchstaben. Und Krieg mit G. Wie Grube.
Translator’s Note:
Wolfgang Borchert’s short stories catapult us into the catastrophic mess of the Second World War and its aftermath from a perspective lesser known to Anglophone readers—that of the unwilling German soldier. They draw heavily on Borchert’s own experiences. His biography is both fascinating and tragic: growing up in a liberal family during the rise of Nazism, his teenage years were marked by minor—but still dangerous—resistances, such as skipping Hitler Youth meetings and not wearing uniform on Nazi festive days. He eventually dropped out of secondary school and discovered a passion for acting; his few months in the profession were the happiest of his short life.
In 1940, Borchert was arrested by the Gestapo, beaten and released. Later, as a Wehrmacht conscript, he was court-martialled multiple times: for attempting to evade military duty, for making statements against the regime, and—after he’d narrowly escaped the death sentence—for parodying the Nazi’s chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Amazingly, he survived the war, but a combination of harsh conditions and severe illnesses had ruined his health. He died of chronic liver failure in 1947, at the age of only twenty-six.
Borchert was an important spokesperson for his “betrayed generation,” writing some forty short stories and a seminal radio play in the two years before his early death. He was one of the first German authors to use the short story form for his experiments with structure and tone. Though he would posthumously be recognised as a literary giant, in life he was also a boy caught up in something bigger than himself, rebelling where he could. His radical rejection of tradition and authority is keenly present in his work. He disdained those he called “polished grammarians,” favouring a sparse, accessible style that plunges us into his narrative world.
Borchert’s work is raw, angry, poignant, occasionally tender, always honest and often infused with a wry humour and thread of hope. His themes of authoritarianism, disillusionment, survival, guilt, and the difficulty of returning to civilian life after conflict are as topical and emotionally resonant as ever. “That Tuesday” was experimental, pushing the then-boundaries of the form in the way it depicts both the casual cruelty of war on the front lines and the aftershocks in civilian life through loosely linked vignettes. The piece is very much of its time while remaining—at least to this Western European reader—curiously accessible and relevant as it demonstrates the absurdity of conflict.
I first read Borchert in a café in Munich, with just enough German to coax the puzzle pieces into a coherent picture and experience the haunting depths of the language for myself. I was hooked. Years later, translating him has been a joy. The trickiest challenges lay in replicating what German historian and author Dieter Wellershoff called the “electric impulse” of Borchert’s words, created through his unpretentious lexical choices and searing precision, and in rendering an authentic English that evokes the 1940s. To address this, I attempted to write sparingly, without falling to staccato phrasing, and leaned on the chummy language of British war films to capture the soldiers’ direct speech. My hope for this translation is that it enables others to experience the gripping poignancy of a small portion of Borchert’s beautiful, simple and evocative writing for themselves.
Wolfgang Borchert (1921–1947) was a German author renowned for his critical examination of the Second World War. He grew up in a liberal family in Hamburg, Germany, against a backdrop of rising Nazism and, as a rebellious young conscript to the Wehrmacht, was court-martialed multiple times and narrowly avoided being sentenced to death. The war broke his health, but that did not stop him writing prolifically until he died from liver failure in 1947 at the age of only twenty-six. He is credited with being a major influence on German literature and is still studied in schools and universities.
Jennifer Busch is a translator and editor who particularly enjoys short and flash fiction. She holds BAs in English Literature and Modern Foreign Languages as well as MAs in French and Translation. Her work has been published in Consequence, Asymptote, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Little Fruits Magazine, and elsewhere, and she was co-shortlisted for the John Dryden Translation Competition in 2025. She lives near Munich with her young family, and when she’s not busy with words or toys you can probably find her baking cakes or drinking a well-earned glass of red.
I’m a Danish illustrator exploring the wonderfully absurd world of reality television through pen and paper. Fascinated by the unexpected humor in human behavior, even in the most serious situations, my work reimagines memorable moments through caricature and exaggeration. I’m particularly drawn to the little moments, fleeting expressions, and seemingly insignificant remarks that reveal so much more than what’s being said. Through my illustrations, I channel the vibes and unspoken dynamics of these moments, turning them into stories of their own. You can find my work on Instagram.
Kelcey Ervick is a writer and artist creating visual narratives in a variety of media. She is the author of four award-winning books, including the graphic memoir, The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women’s Lives, winner of a 2023 Ohio Book Award. She is co-editor with Tom Hart of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature. Kelcey’s comics have appeared in The Rumpus, The Believer, Washington Post, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. She writes and draws stories about the creative life in her newsletter, The Habit of Art.
objects in a museum but the voice from before before the museum of thought that’s us we are the ones who are at the museum not what we see but display cases of crossed arms an alphabet of faces on old letters we have just written for tomorrow’s post
[des objets dans un musée]
des objets dans un musée mais la voix d’il y a d’il y a le musée de la pensée c’est nous c’est nous qui sommes au musée pas ce qu’on voit mais des vitrines de bras serrés un alphabet de visages sur de vieilles lettres celles que nous venons d’écrire pour la poste de demain
Henri Meschonnic, Infiniment à venir, Editions Dumerchez, 2004
[it’s all lives]
it’s all lives that cast me and make my memory a forest of forgetfulness where I walk to hear myself better a rumor where far and near I recognize that it’s your voice
[c’est toutes les vies]
c’est toutes les vies qui me fondent et me font de ma mémoire un bois d’oublis où je marche pour mieux m’entendre une rumeur où loin et proche je reconnais c’est ta voix
Henri Meschonnic, Et la terre coule, Éditions Arfuyen, 2006
Translators’ Note:
Henri Meschonnic’s poetry resists the idea that fidelity in translation can be reduced to lexical equivalence. His poems are less about fixed meanings than about the ongoing motion between speaker and addressee, between past and present, between speech and silence. To translate him faithfully is to attend to this motion — to carry across not just the words, but the rhythms, tonal shifts, and relational energy that make them alive. Fidelity here becomes a matter of preserving the poem’s living pulse. Paradoxically, this often requires deliberate “infidelity” to the surface in order to remain true to the poem’s inner movement.
These translations explore the shifting terrain between fidelity and infidelity in intimate, historical, and linguistic relationships. The poem “objects in a museum” bears witness to what cannot be recorded and questions the possibility of a single, faithful history, evoking the way “faces” are recorded “on old letters / we have just written / for tomorrow’s post.” In “it’s all lives,” the speaker captures the doubled identity of self and other, or of original and translation. These two poems inhabit the gray spaces where trust, desire, and transformation meet.
Translating Meschonnic means working in these gray spaces. He was deeply critical of what he called “the tyranny of the sign”, the reduction of language to a system of transferable units. For him, meaning was inseparable from the prosody of a text: its pacing, its silences, its sensory and emotional charge. This view shifts the translator’s task away from mechanical equivalence toward re-creating a relational field in another language. That field is made of voice — not just what is said, but how it is said, and how it addresses the reader.
Fidelity, here, is not a static contract but an evolving practice of attention, in which the translator listens for the poem’s ongoing transformations and answers them in kind. What remains constant is not a fixed equivalence, but an openness to the poem’s capacity to surprise, unsettle, and remake the reader. Each translation is thus a new birth — an event that, like any relationship, holds within it both fidelity and its transgressions, bound together in the act of continuing to speak.
Henri Meschonnic (1932–2009) was a French poet, translator, linguist, and theorist whose work reshaped modern poetics and translation studies. Best known for his translations of the Hebrew Bible and his monumental Critique du rythme, he championed the primacy of rhythm, prosody, and relational energy over literal equivalence. Author of nineteen poetry volumes, Meschonnic received major honors, including the Max Jacob International Poetry Prize, the Mallarmé Prize, the Jean Arp Francophone Literature Prize, and the Guillevic–Ville de Saint-Malo Grand Prize for Poetry. His poetry has been translated widely around the world.
Gabriella Bedetti holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa and has studied Henri Meschonnic’s work since the 1970s. Following her introduction of Meschonnic at the 1988 MLA Convention, her translations, essays, and interviews appeared in New Literary History, Critical Inquiry, and Diacritics. Meschonnic’s widow, Régine Blaig, granted permission to include a personal remembrance of his poetic process in The Butterfly Tree: Selected Poems of Henri Meschonnic, translated with Don Boes and currently seeking a publisher. An introductory essay on his poetry is featured in The Collidescope.
Don Boes holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University in 1985, and a B.A. with Distinction from Centre College, in 1980, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. A three-time recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship, he has held residencies at Ragdale and MacDowell. Boes authored Good Luck With That, Railroad Crossing, and The Eighth Continent, which A. R. Ammons selected for the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. His poems and translations appear in Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.
Thank you for this little house four walls five windows and this April in the sky
He’s gone at twenty-eight. Cancer. Stage four by the time he found out.
For his final gigs, he slaps Pierrot makeup all over his face and puts on a robe that makes him into a harlequin (if he may say so himself). He can’t bear anyone looking him in the eye.
He goes to die at his parents’ place. It’s the decent thing to do: it only makes sense that he’d want a proper farewell. He was born in a microscopic village that got annexed to Ukraine through the gears of bureaucracy. A real godforsaken place. That’s what he left Moscow for; up-and-coming, economic-boom Moscow. Imagine that.
It’s only when I get there that I learn he has a wife. That he has a son. That she’s young; a child in appearance if not in age.
It’s the dead of winter, minus 20 or thereabouts. There isn’t a single car on the streets. No heating in people’s homes. This teeny tiny girl keeps slapping her arms to keep warm, and doesn’t ever ask why I came.
Here’s why I came: to fax his diagnoses to Moscow’s luminaries and quasi-Western private clinics.
My family sets three different knives on the lunch table. I know what sort of butter works best with every type of caviar, and I know the appropriate ratio of butter to caviar that goes on a slice of bread. I am that up-and-coming Moscow he came from.
I produced his last three albums. They’re dedicated to me, he made them for me.
(I came to save him. I can afford to try.)
When I met him, he was already having affairs. All shameless, all public. And I wonder, how does it feel? To marry a guy and never see him again. To have him and keep losing him, like a vow dissolving into vapour: enormous and empty, pure and futile, unspeakably sacred.
What part of him could she lay claim to, anyway? A boy of seventeen, yearning to leave? Or this relic, this broken man, who truly believes now is the time to come back to this place?
And yet, she does have a point. This shabby provincial girl, wearing flimsy slippers and a jacket that barely holds together, showing me around her shithole of a hometown. This girl who dreams of a fur coat. I tell her they’ve gone out of style in Moscow: we all travel in big, black heated cars these days, all dressed up in our evening wear.
She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t yell at me, she doesn’t ask how I dare say “evening wear” so casually. She doesn’t call me names, and she still asks no questions.
Dull, already withering at twenty-four, barely educated, she’s so damn right about everything that I walk out while he’s still breathing. I forfeit the game, give up the advantage, stuff the doctors’ paperwork back in my bag.
My grandmother was a nuclear engineer, the first woman to become a nuclear engineer in all of Russia. She used to tell me that I was magnificent. That I was exceptional. That people like us don’t compare ourselves to ordinary folk: that’s in poor taste. I was never taught about guilt, and I was never taught how to apologise.
Sometimes, late in the evening, I listen to the songs he used to sing with that sideways glance of his. I was never taught how full lives lived in tight spaces can be, even when they seem empty.
Translator’s Note:
The grief that underpins every word, and the desperate urgency it propels the narrator with, is the aspect of Stella Poli’s short story “E nel cielo l’aprile” (And This April in the Sky) that immediately drew me in as a reader. On the face of it, this is the voice of a woman who can’t bear to lose a companion to a cruel illness, and is prepared to sacrifice time and money to the near impossible task of saving him. Bewildered, numbed by the magnitude of her loss, generous with the resources at her disposal. But so much more is happening here.
As a flash fiction writer, I have a deep appreciation for stories that pack a lot of meaning in a short space, and stay with readers long enough to keep them asking questions after reading the last word. In this case, “long enough” meant translating for two years, with long breaks between drafts. Each time I went back to the original text, I noticed new and different layers beneath the lines. A pettier, less benevolent protagonist began to take shape. I saw the stubbornness of the wealthy woman who refuses to accept there are illnesses she cannot cure with money. I heard the embittered ex-lover’s voice, dripping with disdain for the places and people her loved one came from and chose to return to, even though those places and people made him into the man she can’t bear losing. And I glimpsed someone unpleasant, ominous, subtly threatening: the privileged daughter of a neo-imperialist state, staking a claim on her lover’s art, exerting a dominance she never before had reasons to question.
This is the first translated short fiction piece I’ve submitted to a magazine. I shared my first draft in a small online workshop, as part of a literary translation course with Jen Calleja in 2024. I credit the course with giving me the confidence to trust my instinct and my experience of the English I speak, read and write—for example, when they suggest rhythm, verb tense, or sentence structure choices that look like departures from the source language. In a happy coincidence, I read Jen’s book, Fair—The Life And Art Of Translation, right as I was working on what felt like the most evident departure in this story: the final sentence.
My first draft of it was a straightforward, almost-literal translation (“My grandmother never taught me how full the small things really are, even when they look empty.”) I kept it like that for a long time; but I sensed there was something I was overlooking—a shade of meaning I could no longer disguise with subtext once I’d glimpsed it. For the line to really land in English, for the wave of grief to wash over the narrator, I (as a reader, as a writer) needed her to name those “small things” she’d spent all her life diminishing; to admit, at last, that other people’s lives are every bit as real as her own.
For all this to translate into the sentence you’re reading, I had to argue with an inner voice that gets particularly strong when I’m writing. A voice that usually yells: “How dare you?” Yes, how dare I take liberties with something as crucial as a story’s ending? I almost gave in to that voice; then, I came across this quote in Fair:
“I sometimes imagine that at the start or end of every line in my translations, it says: ‘I’m pretty sure they’re saying’, or ‘…I reckon’ … I’m not the author, and even the author isn’t always sure what they meant, or sure of all the influences on what they’ve expressed.”
Coming from an experienced translator I admire, it comforted me, and made me feel less alone in my process and choices for this piece. The (inner and outer) world this story takes place in, the way I see it, the way the author’s words shaped it in my mind. It makes me wonder: what will you see?
Stella Poli is a postdoctoral research fellow in Italian Linguistics at University of Pavia. She teaches Contemporary Poetry, Editing and Writing at IULM University. She obtained a PhD in Contemporary Philology at University of Genova, discussing a thesis on Literary Translation. Her research interests focus on archives, translation and contemporary literature and poetry. She is editor of Trasparenze, Configurazioni, La Balena Bianca, and Nuova Tèchne. She has written many short stories, for Italian literary reviews, such as ‘tina, malgrado le mosche, L’inquieto, Rivista Blam, Turchese, Topsy Kretts, and more. Her first novel, La gioia avvenire, was shortlisted by Premio Calvino in 2022, and then published by Mondadori in 2023.
Federica Silvi is an Italian writer and translator based in London. She has published flash fiction and creative nonfiction in Identity Theory, Temple in a City, Major 7th Magazine, Memoir Mixtapes, Visual Verse, and more. Her first published literary translation piece, an extract from Olga Campofreda’s award-nominated 2023 novel Ragazze perbene, appeared in Asymptote in 2025. For infrequent social media appearances, find her on Bluesky as @edgwareviabank.
The ground was wet at dawn. All night it rained but she hadn’t heard the dripping in the drainpipe. She’d been submerged in a dream, where the hero missed no opportunity to fondle the girl he had rescued from the fire. Someone else ruffled her hair. She woke up, no one by her side. She touched her pelvis, then the bed. She had to change the sheets, but before doing so, she stayed there a moment looking at the stain as if at the sky.
[El suelo amaneció mojado]
El suelo amaneció mojado. Toda la noche había llovido pero ella no escuchó el goteo en el canelón. Estaba sumergida en un sueño, donde el héroe no perdió la oportunidad de manosear a la chica que había salvado del incendio. Alguien más rizó su cabello. Despertó. Nadie estaba a su lado. Tocó su pubis, luego la cama. Tenía que cambiar las sábanas, pero antes de hacerlo, permaneció un rato mirando la mancha como si mirara el cielo.
Translator’s Note:
I met the poet Guadalupe Ángela while learning Spanish in Oaxaca, Mexico. An educator through and through, she invited me to translate some of her writing, to bring my love of poetry to my language study. After I drafted each translation, Ángela and I talked through the work together, ensuring I understood the original and she understood the translation choices. While most of her work is poetry, this piece comes from a collection of flash fiction she published in 2009 called cuchillitos, which translates to “little knives.” This untitled little knife deftly, simply showcases many of the themes woven throughout her work: girlhood and womanhood, power and sexuality, growing up, changing bodies, and our interactions with the natural world. The protagonist’s own growing, her changing body and mind, are echoed in the natural world by the ground, by the sky. The simplicity of these side-by-side images—the dreaming mind, the wet human body, the rain, the sky—called, we thought, for a near direct translation, allowing readers to encounter these juxtapositions and make sense of the echoes in their own way.
Guadalupe Ángela (1969-2020) was a prolific writer and beloved teacher from Oaxaca, Mexico. She published several books of poetry, including Hiedra de luz (2004), Conchas donde guarda la jacaranda sus semillas (2009), Poemario de las vírgenes (2013),A lápiz haikús (2013), and Autorretratos de una joven bailarina (2019). Her work is part of several anthologies and has been translated into Italian, German, and English.
Yael Kiken teaches writing and literature at Howard University and lives in Washington, DC, with her family. Zarpamos is her debut collection in translation.
S. Tremaine Nelson is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the Columbia University MFA Program. He edited previously at The New Yorker and The Paris Review. In 2020, he revived Northwest Review and served as editor-in-chief and publisher for 10 issues and two feature titles. His fiction is published in The Southern Review. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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