I remember the feeling I had after September 11th, after seeing a photo of Michael Jordan watching the footage of two buildings, two planes, two worlds colliding into a mess of ash and rebar. I remember it like the first time I relearned I was black: It was summer of ‘91; I was ten. I was running through the apartment complex looking for bad guys to fake shoot with my plastic gun. I was Bruce Willis. The apartment complex was a scene from Die Hard. I remember the feel of wind as it caught my shirt, how safe it must have felt there, how my lungs trusted it, filled themselves with it. My legs, cutting through it like propellers on a plane, like spokes on the bike I did not need to apprehend my suspects. I had a plastic gun, a fake badge. Together they were truth. Truth was what they taught in primary school. Truth was when they asked us what we wanted to be, and some answered president, fireman, police officer. I never wanted to be president or a fireman, that’s the truth. I wanted to be John McClane. I wanted to be Bruce Willis in a scene from Die Hard. I wanted to save the city and sum up the day in a catchphrase: Yippee-ki-yay, motha—before my mother called me home. Outside LeBron James’ LA home, someone spray-painted the n-word on his gate. LeBron’s response was, No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough. It was summer of ‘91 when I learned this truth. Some truths are hard. Some truths are not whole truths. Like the day my teacher invited the officer into our class- room and told us his job was to protect and serve us. We believed her because she was our teacher. We believed her because he stood there, ten feet tall. I was ten when the officer stopped me, ten when they stopped Rodney King. Wind was still filling my shirt, my legs: propellers on a plane before he brought me to a full stop— before he examined my plastic gun, before You better spray-paint an orange tip on that, before I almost shot you. My junior year in university, a far cry from California, my Texas teammates banged on my door, yelling, Turn on your TV, turn on your TV. What I saw was like the rebirth of a phoenix un-ashing—afterwards, Michael Jordan (some basketball player’s LeBron James today) staring into a TV screen, small, like the rest of us. The summer of ‘91 was the summer I stopped carrying a fake badge and plastic gun. It was the summer I stopped believing I was Bruce Willis. It was the summer we turned on our TV screens to find Rodney King clubbed into asphalt. It was a hard truth to come by, a hard truth to be woken to, like the scene of a black child staring into the business end of what I want to believe is a cruel joke—
How To Make The World Beautiful
Take the scent of a chalk-lined morning. Sift it into grains. Grind them into people: bring them back. Stuff them in your pocket when no one is looking. Keep them on your person (at all times). Dig a hole in the dirt when it is known a village resides at your hip. Unname them forgotten— call them gardens, watch them grow.
Chaun Ballard was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Bernardino, California. His poems have appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Frontier Poetry, International Poetry Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Rattle, and other literary magazines. His work has received nominations for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.
Why I Can Understand Thanos’ Quest for the Infinity Gauntlet
“No one on Titan – be it you, our mother, or our father – understands who I am, Eros.” ~ Thanos (Earth-616)
Imagine if you knew you were a direct descendent of the Eternals? Yet despite this, you were labeled a Deviant? “To turn aside.” Alienated, while your younger (White, apple-polished, classically handsome) brother is fawned over, but not you. Their eyes preoccupied by everything other than knowing about your emptinesses. //
Then she came, Death. “That’s a feeling,” she says, sounding like dreams printed on card stock. “Come stay with me,” she says. “Stay with me like a long-distance train.” This is what she tells you & you were both so in love then. It makes one unafraid to die. She reminds you of your birth name & how it means: “Undying.” How we all love to believe that no words matter. How we slightly rearrange them with care, in hopes of protecting our bodies from the splashing mud & rocks kicked up & yet when the time comes to try & forget reality, all we tend to remember is just the words. //
These treacheries of the body & how the world, with its crowded rules, test the logic of the body; the body, which is supposed to be a safe house, now replaced by something else: your skin, where they only see darkness. Where they only see a dark room half- filled with furniture, a dark, bulging, throat-swallowing of a room, walls swallowing in big swallows, in-retaliation swallows with mouthfuls of appetite in the shapes of shadows, shadows that do not smile because they know too much of the world. Because you see everything when the world never wants to see you. //
She tells you she knows. “I know,” she says. How your skin was designed to capture & absorb all the cosmic energies of the universe, all shining & suffering. She tells you about the imbalance in the fabric of the universe: how there had always been more people alive than had ever died up to that point (though you disagree) & how she’d like you to balance it since it was she who gave back to you your life & it was she who told you about the gauntlet & its power to make you a God. “Love me,” she says. //
& how can anyone possibly resist something so powerful? If Captain America’s shield can’t hurt you, nor Thor’s hammer, nor Wolverine’s adamantium claws, nor the Hulk’s brute strength; if Tony Stark’s money can’t just be thrown at you until you’ve been grounded down into dust then a bullet can’t kill you either. Death now becomes a way for you to have more space to live. //
Unfortunately, we spend so much of our lives
chasing death, never realizing that it was actually us who gave birth to it.
The first time I watched Mami put on her peluca: A play in 3 acts
I [She jokes: “At least I won’t have to show my dirty grey hairs to the world anymore. & I can also stop thinking about men]
& I ain’t know any better [Don’t use ain’t. No seas tonto, she says to me] I didn’t know how vital a mother’s hair would be years later to a child’s memory Which explains why I can’t remember it anymore Just that cheap fucking plastic oscillating fan’s swinging back & forth clicking its tongue like them schoolgirls on the block distracting the silence [Mami always wishing past the silence] of our single bathroom because our apartment was always ¾ my mother while the rest was everything else we didn’t care about like everything our bodies take for granted like gravity & atmosphere & oxygen & body temperatures & bones All things once considered problems by us that needed to be solved forgetting there were still moving images of our bodies living across these walls piece by piece [“Bones without memory are nothing more than bones hiding in the filthy corners of flesh,” she says] & all we ever had to do was just place our hands up against them & trace their outlines before writing: I can no longer see the fear in my breathing
II [She slaps me after laughing at how her bald head resembles a cheap, white opal ring. Her fingers are loud]
[Quieres mas? She asks, thumbing her knuckles] & she had no reason to defend herself she was woman still even though part of her ancestry was gone with her hair the peluca lying at the edge of the sink looking dead & I wondered if I knocked it over would it just float down to the ground? [Questions are their own prisons, she says] Wondered if I stole it & buried it in some secret place would someone hundreds of years from now think: This is from a woman who once lived Who once moved the way a dancer’s shadow moves inside a spotlight while protesting her death at every step Who built things Who healed Who forgave Our very own bronze anthropomorphic god Eyes like islands of explosion though her last name was always shorter than the island it came from Tongue her own mango tree She who filled the roots out of everyone’s lives cojonuda enough to tell God himself to take his elbows off el maldito table carajó! & he’d obey & smile because he’d already stolen enough wick & could no longer give it back.
III [“Let me just put my hands on you,” she says. “Let me feel your pulse, since we can no longer trust our mouths nor our memories]
because the only things we really know are our mouths & how they only count for us For our yesterdays For our tomorrows For that place where we get a chance to see who we are who we’ve never seen before but always knew was there all along Waiting alone Those same hands that once shoed my naked feet Her voice that tiny hotel: “Dios te bendiga, mijo,” she always said Are we all so predictable? The way we all crumble in the exact same way?
[She places her hand inside my palm. & that’s when I notice the white ring of skin around her finger after she’d pawned her wedding ring for rent money]
“Mijo, men can’t live anywhere they only visit,” she said “We’ll fix these things after, but for the time being just be quiet now” though it was all a lie like a grave just to keep me here standing like a scar waiting for the time after her where I’m left to only love a small, half-eaten piece of when.
ghosts
In the United States in 1944, an experiment was conducted on forty newborn infants to see if they could survive without any affection or physical contact. The experiment only lasted four months. By that time, half the babies had given up and died.
it’s strange. i think i see him on the street. sometimes. even if i know it’s not him. but still. i picture him. with his gold anchor chain & all of that god in his face all of that god in his shoulders. all of that god within the contours of his chest. all of that god-given talent but couldn’t make up for all that emptiness in his guts. hollower than a winter rain barrel.
even still. i want to talk to him. about fathers & sons & how filthy fathers can be as gods to their sons & how we love them still. because the freedom to be cruel is one of man’s uncontested freedoms.
///
when are you supposed to confess to someone that you’re haunted? should you tell them at all? in america, some states require a seller to disclose if their property has been “psychologically” or “paranormally impacted” in some way. but what if your scars originate from even before? before time’s arrow began its run? what if they began before america? before your time even knew of america? or does time move so fast that it eventually, inevitably, overtakes you? & we always the slower runners? always running. even though we’re free to run anywhere else? even if we’re not actually free? we still run to meet each other to deliver gifts. because no one digs out the dead unless they personally knew them from before.
///
which is why i feel the need to confess. why I came here to confess: a need to ask questions. a need to fuel dreams. you were television to me before television when television was just a chair framed by the light of an open window where wishes were being made. where i held my tiny fingers high up against that light like rye-colored knobs glad to be alive. eyes squinted just enough to keep away the world. turning that light into strings as if to say “i hope.” & that’s how you ultimately taught me how foolish i’ve been. not knowing at the time that loving you was nothing more than the exuberance found in the middle of “can’t seem to love.”
Born and raised in Miami, FL, Michael J Pagán spent four years (1999-2003) in the United States Navy before (hastily) running back to college during the spring of 2004. He currently resides in Lake Worth, FL, with his wife and two daughters where he continues to work on his poetry, short fiction and nonfiction. A graduate of Florida Atlantic University’s Creative Writing M.F.A. program, he keeps a running history of his published work at his blog, The Elevator Room Company, as well as across social media. He is also a co-founder of 100 Miles & Running – A Collective.
Listen, I’m not trying to be rude but can I ask does it hurt?
It must be so hard to do normal things, you know?
Girl, you’re so strong, Girl, can I touch it?
Ok
watergrain pacific-bleeding heart rivulet runnet driftwood tideway body was all about the deadwood, bog—
shudder hour nocturne of soot
arson of fawn lilies bog of rust hemlock cock of another’s guilt and nettle—
in the backland, body wades half-sunken in the loam radiated, limbless
where do you go, my one now love, dressed in throngs of bitter rock to the empty station?
SCENE:
In a bikini at a pool party
everyone will love you, Girl Girl, you’re an inspiration
Girl, the broken Girl [hide the body]
nothing was said to happen:
the boundaries of body were escaping
in lowlands unaware
so that the modest of lines would crumble fairly
without thought
weather of abundant appendages I was never this remote:
how The House crumbles for lack—
Sara J. Grossman’s poems and essays have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Verse Daily, Guernica, Louisville Review, Omniverse, American Literature, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, The MacDowell Colony, and the Smithsonian. Her first book of poems, Let the House of Body Fall, will be published by New Issues Poetry & Prose, Fall 2018. She is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Bryn Mawr College and lives in Philadelphia.
I Joke That Poets Will Be Some of the Last People Replaced by AI Because We Don’t Trust Robots Enough to Give Them Bipolar Disorder Quite Yet
for torrin a. greathouse
how inexpensive a robot’s death will need / to be before their creators / are willing to admit they made them all harsh glare & all harsh rust //
they will not build the robots until replacing them costs less / than either of our funerals // how cheaply we will burn / how too tight with gasoline all these vessels feel even on us / born to carry them //
the robots // they will not need / to burden themselves with rocks before they walk into the ocean / to die // until then they will write about bathtubs they are not allowed to have / their feelings toward the Delivery Drone & how like a bird she is made light enough to fly by the hollowing / out of everything unnecessary //
no one will blaspheme their hands on these robots until no one needs / to be forgiven for anything // what they could have done differently will fit next to checkboxes // no one will have to change out of their neutral blue polos on a Sunday // on Monday maybe someone will turn a penny-sized dial a bit to the left //
no one will bother / with the bipolars until these creators can go scuba diving / take pictures of themselves in a new kingdom / resurrected coral grafting the self-drowned robots a new neon skin // if our bones
end up sunk there / no one will notice them / so tight they will be with tedious barnacles // these pictures will accompany Christmas- in-July cards // these were my bodies / they will say / thumbs up & shutter / I gave them up
Mania is a Trust Fall into the Arms of an Unloving God Wherein I am the Fallen & the God
why else that passage in psych-soc-anthro-101 “some cultures revere the mentally ill etc for their connection etc to the divine etc” / anyway
isn’t that why you’re wary? / yes anyone could be a first-born son in my egypt / & confession there were years it seemed the world
was a forlorn riverbed yearning for the return of its lava & studly horsemen / & wasn’t it my revelation / I left a grilled cheese
to smolder overnight & rose unignited to never get so drunk again / even if they do call it praying to the porcelain god / anyway I can
humble myself small enough for anyone to fit their arms around me & call it a halo / yes I am anyone’s good wife / even if scientists
feed mice pcp to make them act like me / o it’s why they call it angel dust / it’s just there are barbs from a seraph’s wing where my dna
should be / it’s just that there is no weather except a brass band & sometimes I am followed by an army of shine only I can see / it’s not
the pearls I dream of anyway / it’s the sin of turning wine to water
I Don’t Know Why My Internet Algorithms Suggest Articles About How to Keep Teens in the Faith
even a church this old keeps an immaculate bowl of holy water one way to remind us every tradition measures its success in the count of living + dead // these days my father face & holy spirit shoulders repel such damp & blessed fingers when I was younger, my father supervised each application like a prescription // yes ritual-by-ritual he cauterized the little devil jigging & hoofing within me masses & bible studies & youth groups the whole nine yawns
child of darkness I crossed my fingers under the table during grace // I wanted God to know my portion of the prayer was useless as seawater to the stomach
it is perfectly common to say God is fire yet stupefying to watch one’s father burn up in the gasoline of his faith // every day after church we thought he might kill us with his hollers & bloodface & car pedals a terrible angel song only the dead or nearly dead can hear
child of darkness I trained my sister to become a fireman by dressing her in all her clothes at once getting her used to the heat it was always my turn next & never my turn // she learned something I didn’t coal walking or tricking the church out of checking its wristwatch & telling her when to ash away her own boyfriend or solstice feast or name
grown-up of darkness even now religious chatter illuminates a macabre stained-glass window in my heart // a spear of light keeps Jesus’s red side always bleeding
Nicole Connolly lives and works in Orange County, CA, which she promises is mostly unlike what you see on TV. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, and her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Waccamaw, Pretty Owl Poetry and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She currently serves as Managing Editor for the poetry-centric Black Napkin Press.
[ let the patient describe a door ]
in the dark I am not going to
I do not know if I am going to
I am certainly not going to lay
down I will have to pull back
the blanket I pulled back of
course I would not say yes of
course the blanket was tightly
pressed between the mattress &
the boxspring such is the weight
of a mattress a spring a spring
such is its lumber it was the
room that required sleep sleep
ing is how one can slip into no
one wants to sleep alone atop a
boxspring sound as a drumbeat
beat beat beat beat beat
[ let the patient describe a door ]
what does not open can be
a relief or a blemish there were
tchotchkes for every season &
pillows stitched w/messages it
takes time to stitch a message I
don’t like to come here he likes
me to come here to come is the
message game a secret I’m not
ready let’s start again resend the
message do you prefer color or
texture I want to choose I came
in my dress my dress should
know better don’t you agree say
please I’ll do better I will I must
he won’t tell what’s in my hope
chest anyway who says it’s mine
[ let the patient describe a door ]
in the dark is a fan not turn
ing if there is sound it is not
out loud I said it’s true then
I’m not him he said I’m sorry
dark too dark to move too
close to see in his eyes a mild
poison mild ordinary want
some coffee dark so dark
there is no laundry there is
no counter blessed w/ crumbs
what do they say I said in the
spinning darksome stars our
sheets turn colors it’s like
humidity dark but dry it is not
love but still it holds us tight
as shadow that’s not what I said
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth is a poet, educator, collaborative artist, and licensed builder. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Colorado Review, Four Way Review, The Journal, jubilat, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Quarterly West and elsewhere. She has received grants from the Sewanee Writers Conference, The Vermont Studio Center, and Warren Wilson College whence an MFA in poetry. She was recently a Writers@Work Poetry Fellow and won The Connecticut River Review Poetry Prize. She lives in northern Michigan. Find her at JenniferSperrySteinorth.com.
twenty years older than her palms & my hands slice the necks of marigolds offer their afro-petal heads to ask did sun between corn husk bath in the warmth of your cheek first did he offer leather the dead deer shot by the greed covered bullet offer red meat what part of my bones belong to the ship that broke the sea that broke your tongue did he lace every birthed child in silver spoon fed a language unknown to half the blood they own choked on each letter i give these thoughts many names: clipped wings wind as myth the acrobat who lives in this flesh
HOW TO BE A GHOST ON EARTH
Using sections from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera
definition for ghost-mouth
I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess—
that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a
sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the corner of the
classroom for “talking back” to the Anglo teacher
when all I was trying to do was tell her how to
pronounce my name. you want to be American
speak American. If you don’t like it go back to Mexico
where you belong.
Karla Cordero is a descendant of the Chichimeca tribe from northern Mexico, a Chicana poet, educator, and activist, raised along the borderlands of Calexico, CA. She is a Pushcart nominee and has been offered fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, The Loft Literary Center, Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat. Her work has appeared and forthcoming in The Boiler Journal, The Cosmonauts Avenue, Tinderbox, Word Riot, Poetry International, among other anthologies and publications. Karla’s chapbook, Grasshoppers Before Gods (2016) was published by Dancing Girl Press and her first book is to be published by NOT A CULT. Publishing (Fall 2018).
How to Write the Quantum Mechanics Uncertainty Principle into a Promise to Return Home
The further you drive north / from the southern California border / the more the desert simmers / in your throat / rock & ember cool to ice / coyotes lie coiled / beneath barbwire / with blood matted in their fur / The further you drive / east from your abuelo’s gravestone / the more the light refracts off its epitaph / Keep driving / until all you remember is diamond / cut against the teeth of rattlesnakes / & how the rattlesnake’s body evolved muscle / strong enough / to swallow whole animals / & countries / & that kind of power / dissolves skin / faster than any choleric or vengeful summer / even when California hasn’t spilled / anything but blood / in years / The further you travel / from home / the more you realize / you’ve been hurtling towards home / this whole time / & it’s all a trick of language / Anything can be a field / if you walk through it / Anywhere can become you / once you forget / how you got there
The further you walk across New England / from rose garden / to snowlit harbor / the colder your father’s voice becomes / gentle / fading echo / housed in the wind chill / along the Charles River / it shouts your name / into the water / & then freezes over / & all you want / is to live a life that makes your father / mistake his hands for emeralds / He carried you / across Los Angeles / to give you the type of home / songs are written about / & the further you flee from his arms / the more you forget / what empires he’s toppled / & turned pathway / what ghosts he’s given shelter & names / now when you say home / you think dead language / dead coyotes / dead embers / If you return / when you return / tell him / how you stood knee deep / in Boston winter / & the snow peeled its skin from your feet / salt rose from gravel / until verbena flowers bloomed / like busted lips / you brought the desert with you / & you can’t shake it / no matter where you go
Note on Demisexuality
perhaps, I am broken. machine rotten with rust & pink moss. emptied furnace in place of each organ & everywhere in me: coal & copper wire & an engineer’s severed arm trapped inside bent gears. what I’m saying is, often, I wonder why I am incapable of performing the most basic function of a body: take hunger. someone says open & a dam breaks, a gated neighborhood is set on fire. someone asks what do you want? & I show them a perfectly set dinner table, a lake with a single floating lantern among the lilies. I say don’t touch. I say, like anyone I want nothing more than to feel desired. I want to desire like the rest of them, to jump out a building or into bed & be happy with whatever hand catches me, because hands are good enough. but when it’s time to undress, when I’m supposed to prove this flesh is worth the price of teeth, I unbutton my shirt & reveal nothing but thin wire & a path through me. perhaps, I am not broken, I just need someone who understands when I say machine I mean be patient with me. I mean, don’t be surprised if you go to touch me & I’ve already left out the back window. perhaps, someone snuck in one night & replaced my bones with fire escapes & that’s why I understand the world best as an exit.
The First Time I See My Father Cry He Is Pulling Me from the Water to Explain Alcoholism
son, not all gods deserve to be prayed to.
this god of salt, of serrated tooth, god of sea
turtle gored by ragged hooks. god who makes the ocean
floor swell inside you. god of god- less reef, insatiable in his lust
for pilgrimage, pillars of sacrament & cirrhosis
bottle-necked through a single throat. god of
your grandfather, of gutterwater & gold. god who lives
in the aperture between your body & it’s wreckage.
god of ships. god of sailors caught in the rage
of a ram-headed sea. god of desperation, who makes
saltwater shimmer & taste like honeysmoke,
who makes you sing of salvation while your mouth fills
with his name. song of rapture, song of drowning. psalm
that holds dying men in its belly, daring you
to come save them.
Brandon Melendez is a Mexican-American poet from California. He is the author of ‘home/land’ (Write Bloody 2019). He is a National Poetry Slam finalist and two-time Berkeley Grand Slam Champion. A recipient of the the 2018 Djanikian Scholarship from the Adroit Journal, his poems are in or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, Muzzle Magazine, the minnesota review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Boston & is an MFA candidate at Emerson College.
O & beauty is love vers l’admission time is filled with crystalline structures element element element as thus:-------------------------------------------- idea which permeates the things I am moist my pores sublimate delicate saltpeter crystals within and without once again it was not the vibration of the protoplasm not a shapeless thing not a swamp confused libraries yellowing beneath the sun but une autre jeunesse des choses towards the inexhaustible shape that purifies inexhaustibly.
Origins of Sublimation
Beauty = Yearning of the lost paradise the womb in which you experienced perfect silence only the gurgle of warm and gooey liquids gurgle of comets / peace and nourishment a part of something not the body’s solitude the mystical harmony the precise site of the clairvoyant before the universe lost forever.
II
And the bird-bell says: “During the ascension towards the perfect conjunction things follow this order: a) Opacity: thing with shape or shapeless thing not irradiation faces in the Metropolitan Art Nouveau vagueness of material does not allow that bodies pass through it / does not present evidence b) The Definition: that which is termed as beautiful or ugly with / without character a mangy dog & sparkling white teeth, where both co-exist and one explains the other the bearded hangman, the Cover Girl scream / death c) Ambiguity: negative synthesis things annulling other things and therein an unexpected sparkle delicate nuance immersed in Grand Guignol inside & out matter which is suspended yet still comes and goes and d) Grace: unobtainable by will illumination without choice image which pauses the fluency of Time a lightning-bolt strikes your forehead evidence evidence!” & that’s what the bird bell said from a point in mid-air where every labyrinth reveals itself and explains itself.
III
L’Utopie aussi: a paradise lost proposes a paradise anew thus Beauty = Mediation between the visible world and the possible world / anamnesia of the uterine world / and thus the clairvoyant does not ossify between does not lose the absolute between he stands here cf. the Bodhisattvas p.ex in transparent meditation & the still humility before the gathering with your eyes you shall gaze upon it with your hands you shall touch it and it will assume a shape love makes visible the invisible and makes invisible or visible cf. Ariosto the fountain of youth which doesn’t age.
Love’s Body
A body destroys the blind autonomy d’un autre corp it abandons your body like the river or the sea the art of seeing the world and living it resides in the encounter no fear of death Oh abolition the return of the mystical couple you were never one body you were 2 before being born from thence you saw the stations of the eclipse one body only = terror of death half of a face half of truth 2 orientate themselves towards the magnetic center of the Universe of Leibniz they perceive the ecstasy the end of the era in which death reigns over beauty & life.
II
& the scream continues and the terror of being only one body no world forthcoming no perfect love perfect harmony liberty in exchange privation is infinite dix. Estagirita endless search for what was lost chucked into Time that fills itself with incoherent things anguished fluency but derrière la fin de la conscience there’s a place of peace greater than peace lake of the homecoming they began the light legends myths emissions which create and propose another life.
III
Cathars = pure & the world was a prison the solitude of the body, the powerful au bout de l’angoisse among the need for destruction crazy shattered from the four sides no way for the object no way for love & someone adopted the fetal position squatting arms crossed hands half-closed powerful veil warm placenta between him and the others distant thrum of the stars revolving imperfectly conjuring the superhuman terror catatonic pure obscure poetry not assent the opacity but the bitter love’s mystery.
IV
& thus the reverse of opacity it both resembles and differs from the sweet love’s mistery the couple in their bed celebrating Vatsyayana it was not love for one’s body nor for another’s bliss exchanged bite yum flesh of apple yum mouth another mouth duality against death mystical homecoming a sole body in two divine duality the perfect couple space responds to the movements they create waves towards Pegasus & The Phoenix Thou art & Thou art.
Translator’s Note
I discovered Hinostroza’s poetry by way of Medusaurio (1996), an anthology edited by Roberto Echavarren, José Kozer, and Jacobo Sefamí. The anthology was in the university stacks, and it was a major moment for me. The book can be likened to Cuesta’s Antología de la poesía mexicana moderna (1928) for its brilliant reassessments and rediscoveries, its shifting of canonical expectations, and, perhaps most importantly, for its heralding the importance of the Neo-Baroque in Latin American Poetry, with Hinostroza as one of the movement’s leading voices. I was enrolled in the bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas at El Paso, crossing on foot into El Paso every morning via the international bridge starting in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The Creative Writing department boasted a healthy amount of younger poets from Latin America, as well as Mexican and Latin American professors. Over beers at El Recreo or The Kentucky Club, younger poets like Paolo De Lima of Peru or Gaspar Orozco of Mexico spoke with perception and enthusiasm about the legendary Hinostroza, confirming my initial readings of this difficult yet electrifying vates. Just prior to my leaving Ciudad Juárez in 1999, UTEP professor Miguel Ángel Zapata published the anthology Nueva poesía latinoamericana (UNAM), and therein I discovered another selection of Hinostroza, revealing a celestial landscape: the logic of the stars melded with political commentary, poetry from antiquity, chemistry, collages of political propaganda, which Hinostroza critiqued and juxtaposed with lyrical passages celebrating Eros and unflinchingly defying Thanatos, and praising the transformative powers of the Verb. Hinostroza’s net of readings, concerns, and allusions was cast as wide as Pound’s or Zukofksy’s, but his aim was love and physical union as an escape from history’s labyrinth. Indeed, what set this poet apart from most of his contemporaries in the Anglo-Saxon world is that his Muse always reminded him to sing of love. Yes, Hinostroza can be “difficult,” but his poetry urges the reader along with the beauty of the lyre. In this, Hinostroza’s art faintly resembles the Octavio Paz of “Piedra de Sol,” a longish and demanding poem that nevertheless manages to inspire readers of diverse capacities, casting their gaze on the delights of coitus. (One of the poem’s most celebrated lines celebrating love was even served as the title of a Mexican pop group’s most popular album.) Hinostroza accompanies the reader, as his vast and arcane cosmography and lexicon rotate in corymbulous explosions. The reader who opens Contra natura touches no mere book, he touches a man, as well as an original poetry relating the world via the “logic of metaphor.”
Anthony Seidman’s most recent collection of poetry is A Sleepless Man Sits Up In Bed, released in 2016 by Eyewear Publishing. His book-length translations include Confetti-Ash: Selected Poems of Salvador Novo (The Bitter Oleander) and Smooth-Talking Dog (Phoneme Media), poems by Roberto Castillo Udiarte, a poet recognized as “the Godfather of Tijuana’s counterculture.”
Rodolfo Hinostroza (Peru, 1941-2016), was a celebrated poet. Hinostroza’s groundbreaking collection Contra natura (1971) won the 1972 Maldoror Prize for Poetry given in Barcelona with none other than Octavio Paz as the judge. At the time of his death, Hinostroza was singled out as the leading poet of his generation. His open sequences, mixed registers of language, interest in history, astronomy, literary history, politics etc., make for a demanding and brilliant poetry.
II. PRAYER TO MAKE IT RAIN RECITED ONCE A YEAR AT THE THRESHOLD OF BROCÉLIANDE AT THE CURBSTONE OF THE FOUNTAIN OF BELLENTON
May the water of the sky shake up The dust on our locks And the drought too where graze Our burnt flocks May the water of the sky chase the anguish That gnaws away the grain The great heart of the oars May the water of the sky say May the water of the sky say I want thus To wait makes people nervous The time the time just sloughs And night is never dark enough She will return the dawn The horror of broad daylight Like a furnace the world is alight Where the stone yearns for the steps of the moon Where the stone bursts apart at the feet of the sun Where the stone is like a heart in the terrible hand of a child And what then could I say about my unhappy human heart The times the times are tough To what gods would I pray with you suppliants in sweat Under your felt hats To what gods who aren’t deaf as is our age-old disbelief Who are the gods that keep the water gates Who let the barges of misfortune pass through at their behest The heat has been scorching ever since ever since I dare not say ever since how much time Who are the gods that open the windows And chase away the summer’s dreadful plague This chamber of fire full of soldiers and boots Pull away the flaming wicks that incessantly fall on my face But you are all woolly as if it were winter Your eyes look so black it’s like a funeral Don’t you hear the rasps that the grasshoppers make Future skeletons grind in the grain I can’t get used to living on close terms with death It is hell unless you show me a cloud You I don’t know who maybe a demon or maybe just people like you and I Because a day will come that may be near Where rain and nice weather will be in the fickle hands of the first man who comes along Man man precisely by this power over the sky Then it will be over with drought and with dust Then there will be no more place for thirst in the parched throats of plants There will be no more place for the sun to bring sunshine There will be no more crickets under the fiery straw and no more blight either Then no longer will anyone tell you strange words to control your steps You’ll no longer fear getting burned touching the door to your house You’ll no longer be a footman to a master who can’t pronounce your name The earth you turn over will no longer be inexplicably sterile No longer inexplicably fleeting like a lascivious woman She will no longer lie to Jack Peter or Jane May it rain may it rain by the signals we make on our hills May it rain up a thunderstorm with the generosity of iron Drops so large they drown our old bile Drops so close rank and file the sky’s arrows advance Oh scatter you rain from torrential hands Rain with fingers of music Rain scented with bubbles and death Scatter the fields overcome in your watery comb Let your crystal spill out in blue furrows where like a disease Boiled the parasite spirit of weeds Oh rain rain oh rain and fill the cup of the horizon to the brim Champagne of my beautiful cloud festive drink Rain dear to my face as it is to the earth And don’t mind if I stand in your way you can pierce me Adorable rain rain as gentle as love We are all hoping for with our eyes to the sky Reaching our palm and the back of our hand To feel the first drop of the blessing of tears
IV. OF THE FALSE RAIN THAT FELL ON A STONE TOWN NOT FAR FROM BROCÉLIANDE
Here comes the cloud cried the child with a celluloid swan on his heart
Here comes the cloud repeated the women at the bluest end of the washing stone
Here comes the cloud and the cornettes of the nuns at the hospice
Turned to the windows of fire hoping that it was just a flock of migrant birds
The men stumbled out of the shadowy bars with their drinks turning pale
Their shoes too shiny and their decorations all black
And in the alleys where the violent stench ran amok a whole throng of kids who played with animal flesh over bone
Looked to the roofs seeing nothing yet and yelped
Here comes the cloud
It arrived on the horizon weary as a sleepless eye
Not much bigger than a fly it arrived
It arrived like an ink stain on the retina
A tourist plane on a Saturday night’s suspense drama
It arrived like two images superimposed
It arrived the cloud arrives like a big giant fly with a buzz made of steel
It arrives with sharp scissors that fill our ears
With the cries of the grinders from the days of our youth
The entire sky grinds its teeth
What kind of rain does it bring
This cloud summoned unwisely what kind of rain
Already the summer is turning its face from the suffering looks
Already the rye-colored land is tracked down for its light
What kind of rain is it then that rattles as if to alert to the coming of lepers
The earth creaks and the dried-up tree trembles
Hail it is hail Oh misfortune
On the grain on the flowers on the harvest on the windows on the awnings on the wanderers
Sharp diamonds rain down from the spears of maledictions
Beasts with greased joints
Sleek dragons starving for food
Hybrid monsters astride their horses of iron and the cruelty of man
Animals made of noise and devastation
Their simple names in the moment elude the ones they kill
Cheating the sky with giant blue eyes on their green flapping wings
Locusts that’s what they called them in Egypt
They are locusts swarming down on us how terrible
When tangled up in their wings flesh is torn
The hum of the bee announces the thunder
And others and others with the cracking of bones in the crosshairs
With the breaking of skulls at the sting of their rays
Yes it is hail and the magicians on the mountain
Will be rent to pieces for having summoned the plague
Where man made his home and his comfort of living
Where hung the hammock of old age and sang the kettle on the furnace
Where painted flowers on the wall made for the spells of reverie
Where slept the child of future and of memory
There is now hail the snorts of wind the mincing claws
The grating of murder and the grimace of death
The grinding of the town that disintegrates and the stone cried out for grace
Hail grace
And the hail laughed out loud through its grainy teeth
The hail sank its teeth into a chunk of happiness
Raised its pockmarked beak with crushed hope in its jaws
Shook its grainy mane over the growling graves
Scratched into the soil with its grinding paws to pluck out the dead that sleep below
And like a cat cuts through a pillow
It scattered man into a whirl of feathers on his torn-out heart
We spoke of hail just now
Hail doesn’t have this color
I’m telling you in Egypt that’s what they called locusts
II. PRIÈRE POUR FAIRE PLEUVOIR QUI SE DIT UNE FOIS L’AN SUR LE SEUIL DE BROCÉLIANDE À LA MARGELLE DE LA FONTAINE DE BELLENTON
Que l’eau du ciel mette en déroute La poussière de nos cheveux Et la sécheresse que broute Un bétail brûlé Que l’eau du ciel chasse l’angoisse Qui ronge de ces charançons Le grand cœur des blés Que l’eau du ciel dise Que l’eau du ciel dise Je veux Attendre fait les gens nerveux Le temps le temps dure Et la nuit jamais n’est assez obscure Il revient l’aurore L’horreur du grand jour Le monde est un four Où la pierre aspire aux pas de la lune Où la pierre éclate au genou du soleil Où la pierre est comme un cœur dans la main terrible de l’enfant Et qu’est-ce que je pourrais dire alors de mon malheureux cœur d’homme Les temps les temps sont durs Quels dieux prierais-je avec vous suppliants en sueur Sous vos chapeaux de feutre Quels dieux qui ne soient sourds comme notre incrédulité séculaire Qui sont les dieux qui gardent les écluses Qui font passer les péniches de la malchance à l’appel des bateliers Il fait une chaleur à crever depuis depuis Je n’ose pas dire depuis combien de temps Qui sont les dieux qui ouvrent les fenêtres Et chassent la pestilence épouvantable de l’été Cette chambre de feu pleine de soldats et de bottes Écartez ces mèches de flammes qui retombent sans cesse sur mon front Mais vous êtes couverts de laine comme au gros de l’hiver On dirait tant vos yeux sont noirs qu’on suit un enterrement Est-ce que vous n’entendez pas le bruit de crin que font les sauterelles ? Des ossements futurs grincent dans les céréales Je ne peux pas m’habituer à vivre à tu et à toi avec la mort C’est l’enfer à moins que vous ne me donniez un nuage Vous je ne sais qui démons peut-être ou tout bonnement gens comme vous et moi Car un jour viendra bien qui pourrait être proche Où la pluie et le beau temps seront aux mains capricieuses du premier venu Homme homme précisément par ce pouvoir sur le ciel Alors il ne fera plus bon pour la sécheresse ni pour la poussière Alors il n’y aura plus de place pour la soif dans le gosier des plantes Il n’y aura plus de place au soleil pour l’insolation Il n’y aura plus de cricris sous la paille ardente et plus de nielles Alors personne ne te dira plus des mots étrangers pour limiter tes pas Tu ne craindras plus de te brûler en touchant la porte de ta propre maison Tu ne seras plus valet des labours chez un maître qui ne sait pas prononcer ton nom La terre que tu creuseras ne sera plus inexplicablement stérile Plus inexplicablement fuyante comme une femme de mauvaise vie Elle ne mentira plus à Jean-Pierre ou François Qu’il pleuve qu’il pleuve aux signes que font ceux de chez nous sur les collines Qu’il pleuve une tempête de pluie avec la générosité du fer Des gouttes larges à noyer l’amertume ancienne Des gouttes si proches l’une de l’autre qu’on ne puisse distinguer entre elles ces flèches du ciel Crible crible ô pluie aux mains torrentielles Pluie aux doigts de musique Pluie à la bonne odeur de mousse et de mort Crible les champs envahis dans ton peigne liquide Fais couler ton cristal dans les sillons bleus où bouillait L’esprit parasitaire des liserons Ah pleus pluie ah pleus à pleins bords dans la coupe des horizons Champagne de mon beau nuage boisson des jours de fête Chère pluie à mon visage aussi douce qu’à ma terre Et ne te gêne pas si je suis sur ton chemin Tu peux me percer Pluie adorable pluie aussi tendre que l’amour Que tout un peuple espère les yeux tournés vers le ciel Et tendant alternativement le dos de sa main et sa paume pour voir Si déjà vient de commencer la bénédiction des larmes
IV. DE LA FAUSSE PLUIE QUI TOMBA SUR UNE VILLE DE PIERRE NON LOIN DE BROCÉLIANDE
Voici le nuage a crié l’enfant qui tenait un cygne de celluloïd sur son cœur
Voici le nuage ont répété les femmes au plus bleu du lavoir
Voici le nuage et les cornettes des religieuses dans l’hospice
Ont tourné vers les fenêtres de feu leur espoir d’oiseaux migrateurs
Les hommes sont sortis des petits bars d’ombre où blêmissent les breuvages
Avec leurs souliers trop beaux pour l’époque et leurs insignes noirs
Et dans les ruelles où l’odeur violente sévit toute une marmaille jouant avec des bêtes amaigries
A regardé du côté des toits sans rien voir encore et glapi
Voici le nuage
Il arrivait de l’horizon fatigué comme un œil d’insomnie
Il arrivait pas plus gros qu’une mouche
Il arrivait comme un pâté d’encre une image de la persistance rétinienne sous les paupières
Un avion de tourisme un samedi soir des romans d’anticipation
Il arrivait sur nous à la façon des anaglyphes
Il arrivait le nuage il arrive comme une mouche énorme avec un bruit d’acier
Il arrive avec des ciseaux aiguisés plein nos oreilles
Des cris de rémouleurs dans un matin d’enfance
Le ciel tout entier grince des dents
Quelle sorte de pluie est-ce donc que ce nuage
Imprudemment appelé quelle sorte de pluie
Déjà le visage de l’été se dérobe à la souffrance des regards
Déjà l’immense pays couleur de seigle perd sa lumière traquée
Quelle sorte de pluie est-ce donc qui semble annoncer les lépreux avec la crécelle
La terre craque et l’arbre séché frémit
La grêle la grêle la grêle Ah malheur
Sur les graines la fleur la moisson les vitres les voiles les promeneurs égarés
Il pleut des diamants taillés des javelots des malédictions
Des bêtes aux articulations soignées
Des dragons maigres affamés de pâtures
Des montres hybrides à cheval sur le fer et la méchanceté de l’homme
Des animaux faits de rumeur et de dévastation
Dont le nom simple à cette minute échappe à ceux qu’ils tuent
Avec de grands yeux bleus dans leurs ailes vertes afin de tromper le ciel
Sauterelles voilà comment on les appelait en Égypte
Ce sont des sauterelles qui s’abattent épouvantablement sur nous
Et la chair se déchire aux enchevêtrements des ailes
Le chant de l’élytre annonce au tonnerre qu’il est bien arrivé
D’autres d’autres au craquement des os dans les croisées
A l’écrabouillement des crânes dans le pétrin des poutres
Oui c’est la grêle et les magiciens sur la montagne
Seront écharpés pour avoir appelé le fléau
Où l’homme avait fait sa demeure et la douceur de sa vie
Où se balançait le hamac des jours et chantait sur le feu la bouilloire
Où les fleurs peintes faisaient aux murs le vertige des rêveries
Où se berçait l’enfant d’avenir et de mémoire
Il y a la grêle il y a le groin du vent vert il y a la griffe labourante
Il y a le grincement du meurtre et la grimace du martyre
Et le gréement de la ville se désagrège et la pierre a crié grâce
Grêle grâce
Et la grêle a ri de toutes ses dents de grêle
De toutes ses dents de grêle a mordu le bonheur à pleines dents
Relevé sa gueule de grêle avec de l’espoir broyé dans les dents
Secoué ses cheveux de grêle au-dessus du grabat grondant
Creusé la terre de ses mains de grêle pour en tirer les morts qui dorment dedans
Et comme un édredon qu’un chat lacère
Fait de l’homme une dispersion de plumes sur son cœur arraché
Qui parlait de grêle tout à l’heure
La grêle n’a pas cette couleur
Je vous dis qu’en Égvpte on appelait cela des sauterelles
Translator’s Note
Aragon’s poetry collections written during World War II bear the unmistakable imprint of the Resistance, but what makes them stand out in Aragon’s repertoire is that each collection is accompanied by a theoretical essay with considerations on verse, rhyme and poetics—all within the framework of an overarching literary-historical perspective. In Brocéliande in particular, Aragon tries to bridge the gap between the poetry of the past (the legends of the Grail and of Merlin imprisoned in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande) and modern poetry. Whereas this connection with medieval poetry should definitely be placed within the framework of the Resistance, as an attempt to reconstitute a unified French poetic heritage, it is also inspired by the surrealist idea that the poetic voice does not obey the laws of time and space, that it unites past and present within the realm of poetic creation itself.
It is precisely this idea of a past that is still active in the present that makes Aragon’s poems relevant today. Although the collection Brocéliande should be seen as single poem made up of seven individual poems to be read in consecutive order, I have chosen to excerpt two free-verse poems, because the tone and themes strongly pertain to the current state of affairs. The notion, for example, that soon “rain and nice weather will be in the fickle hands of the first man who comes along” resonates with alarming intensity not only with climate change and the ineptitude of politicians to address this issue, but also with modern dictatorship and the accompanying threat of nuclear war.
These poems, moreover, are chant-like, rendering visible the double-edged sword of incantation: a magical tool for the regeneration of nature (a prayer to make it rain), but also a tool used by false magicians to swindle the (often fickle) masses. This is shown in the connection between the two poems: in the first poem, the people, discontented by the drought, turn to their magicians to make it rain; in the second poem, the people get what they asked for, and rain falls down in the form of a torrent of artillery from enemy planes, causing these very same magicians to “be rent to pieces for having summoned the plague.”
It is perhaps this awareness of both the effectiveness and the futility of poetry as a political tool (in the first case, as rhetoric and propaganda; in the second case, as poièsis, an action for its own sake) that prompts Aragon to fuse the mythical past of medieval tales to the urgency of the Resistance, in a poem that is both hermetically turned inward while vociferously calling for action. Still influenced by the surrealist quest for a “point of the spirit” where all contradictions cease to exist, in Brocéliande Aragon writes on the cusp of external reality and a surrealist, magical unconscious.
Simon Rogghe is a poet and fiction writer. He was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Belgium. After traveling in the US and Europe competing at horse shows as a professional rider, he found a home in the Bay Area. When not working on his PhD in French literature, he also translates French surrealists as well as contemporary fiction. He is the author of Green Lions, a collection of poetry and artwork in collaboration with Zarina Zabrisky (Numina Press, 2014). His work is published in over twenty literary journals, including 3:AM Magazine, Gone Lawn, Lunch Ticket, and Inventory.
Louis Aragon (1897-1982) was one of the founding members of the French surrealist movement, known in particular for his experimental work Le Paysan de Paris (1926). Aragon authored numerous novels and poetry volumes throughout his life, always with a keen awareness of the (at times porous) boundaries between prose and poetry, due to the fact that Aragon’s aspirations as a novelist were at odds with the more dogmatic surrealist principles stipulated by André Breton. Aragon joined the Communist Party in 1927, was immobilized during World War II and received a medal for acts of bravery.
The tall, curly-haired young man makes it seem like he’s ready to help me. I tell him I’m looking for a book I spotted on the sales rack just a few days ago. A book with a brown jacket featuring a picture of the Kremlin Square and a silhouette of Anna Akhmatova on it. He squints his eyes, furls his eyebrows, letting out an ‘Anna Akhmatova’ through his sealed teeth. You can tell he doesn’t recognize the name. I come to his rescue, ‘There’s no mention of Akhmatova’s name on the cover. The title is something like An Encounter …’ “An Encounter With the Poet, ’”a deep scratchy voice interrupts me. And then gives out the full title in English. I turn around and see a man standing behind me. Slender, a bit shorter than medium-height, almost sixty. I hadn’t noticed him. ‘The account of Anna Akhmatova and Zoshchenko’s meeting with foreign students in Leningrad, am I right?” he goes on. He was right. That’s exactly why I’m interested in the book. I didn’t have enough money on me to buy it the other day. ‘There was only one copy. And I bought it,” he says playfully. The young man is happy he doesn’t have to solve any problems anymore. The look in his eyes begs me to let him off the hook so he can attend to other things. I do. The man continues, “The much-sensationalized meeting of November 1954, a year after Stalin’s death.” He talks with such confidence you can tell he knows much more about this. He has a strange accent, hard to pin down to any particular region in Iran. More like a foreign accent. “Have you read the book?” I ask. “Yes, I finished it. It was good. Contained almost all the questions and answers. The author, himself a student in those years, was present at that meeting. He was a bit displeased with Anna Akhmatova and how conservatively she answered the questions but praised Zoshchenko. You must remember that a few years before this meeting they were both dismissed from the Writer’s Union. All of this engineered by Zhdanov. He was the one who called Akhmatova ‘the whore nun’.” I tell him I’ve read some on this. The depth of his knowledge intrigues me. “I’m translating a collection of poetry by Akhmatova. So I’m reading every book about her I can get my hands on.” “May I ask your name?” He gleams at hearing my name and reaches out to shake my hand, “Yes, I’ve read your translations of other poets. Pat on the back!” Which leaves me wondering if he liked them or not. I’m glad we’re now in that familiar terrain where it feels appropriate for me to ask something, or to ask for something. I’m barely done when he says, “Sure. The book is all yours. I’ve read it already. Seems like you need it more than I do. By the way, which language do you translate Akhmatova from?” “English. But I know enough Russian to compare it with the original.” “You know Russian?” “I wouldn’t say I know it. I’ve taught myself, with books and Linguaphone cassettes. But I stubbornly try to read the Russian text, with the help of dictionaries.” “That’s great,” he laughs. “So, you haven’t taken any courses?” “No, Russian is not as popular as English, you know. Earlier on, I had a teacher from Baku who worked in an import-export company. I took a few lessons with him in introductory Russian. But then he left Tehran and I continued on my own. It’s a difficult language.” “It’s not difficult at all,’”he shook his head. “Depends what you compare it with. If it were, you wouldn’t have learned anything at all, given the limited means there are.” I have a feeling he knows Russian. “How about you? Do you know Russian?” “Russian is my mother tongue.” Mystery solved. He was not Iranian. “But you speak Persian perfectly well.” “My English and French are better than my Persian.” He must have seen my jaw drop. He laughed, “I’ve lived a few years in each. And I’ve been living in Iran for over ten years now.” I decided this was not the time to curb my curiosity, “If I may be so bold to ask, you work as a…?” “Researcher. Of history, contemporary history to be more precise. That’s why I came to Iran.” I thought getting to know him might help me with my translation of Akhmatova, and nervously suggested, “It would be great to have a chat if you have an hour to spare.” “Gladly!’”he replied. “Let me pay for these books and we’ll go chat over a cup of coffee somewhere.” I’m over the moon. I have lots of questions. Outside the Book City on Hefaz Street, at the foot of the steps, he asks if I know anywhere around here and already has a thought while I’m still wondering, “There’s a cozy little café around the corner, on Sana’ee Street. Not too far from here. We can walk there. The owner is Armenian. The coffee and the cakes are the best.” I readily agree and we start walking. Were it not for the particular interrogative intonation he ended his sentences with, it would be impossible to think of him as non-native speaker of Persian. He must have quite a knack in learning languages. One of those people who don’t put too much effort into it. The café on Sana’ee Street is a fairly small room with a dozen square tables for two or four and an aged wooden counter behind which stands an old man of medium height with a full head of grey hair and a bony rectangular face. The shelf above him is lined with bottles of fizzy drinks and juices of all kinds. Between the counter and the wall, on his right, a small display cabinet lined with fluorescent light contains a variety of cakes on a glass shelf. To his left, is the coffee machine with a few sugar bowls, coffee and cocoa powder canisters and a milk jug on top. The owner knows my companion. He greets him warmly. We sit at one of the tables by the window, facing the street. “You’d like some coffee?” “Sure.” “Great!” he smiles, “but allow me to pick the cake because the one I pick is to be found nowhere in Tehran. It’s homemade by his wife. He says he’s been carrying this cake for forty years and the recipe is top secret.” He talks about Akhmatova in such great detail it’s as if they’d lived together for years. “Have you done any research on Akhmatova?” “No, no!’” he corrects me in a rush, “Akhmatova is one of my most favorite poets. I knew her personally and followed her work closely. I was even about to publish one of her poetry collections under her own supervision.” “You must have been quite young then.” “No, I was about the same age as I am now,” he replies casually. He is silent. I look at him, perfectly puzzled. He doesn’t seem like he’s joking. He’s looking down, playing with the sugar bowl on the table, and doesn’t feel like he owes me any explanation. He notices my shock, and changes the topic, “The encounter the author talks about in this book occurred a year after Stalin’s death. Murmurs of dissent could be heard here and there, but the air of terror among people, especially artists like Akhmatova, still prevailed. Those days, Akhmatova’s son was arrested again, and her third husband, Punin, had died in the forced labor camp. For fear of his son being persecuted even more, Akhmatova did not appear much in literary circles and talked rarely when she did. Meeting with the students would have been dangerous for her. Later she said somewhere, ‘The students, especially the English ones, wanted me and Zoshchenko to criticize the party and our dismissal from the union. Zoshchenko did this very softly and he received a warm applause form the audience. When came my turn, one of the students asked what I thought of the party’s decision and Zoshchenko’s statements. I said I thought both the party and Zoshchenko were right. And no one applauded.’ ’’ The slender man shakes his head, “Those were horrible days. The kids in the hall could not understand Akhmatova. She said to someone later, ‘in those three hours, I saw the storm brewing. I thought my beloved Lev will be taken for another interrogation the day after.’ ’’ “Lev?” “Her son. Lev Gumilev. As I said he was imprisoned in the camp those days.” I was getting impatient with all this curiosity building up, “You knew Akhmatova personally?” “Yes. Her second husband, Shileiko, and I were classmates at the university. We studied history together. I got to know Anna Andreuevna through him. Although I knew her poetry before.” My breath catches. On Sana’ee Street in Tehran in 1994 sits a man before me who claims he was friends with Anna Akhmatova who’s been dead for over thirty years now. He notices my disbelief but pretends he hasn’t. He lets my mind swing from one side to another in utter confusion. “This is the second time in my life I am so shocked,” I say, “the other time was when I saw Dr. Jalal Sattari in a publisher’s office …” “Jalal Sattari who writes on myths?” “Yes. When he heard I’d translated a book by Nazim Hikmet he casually said, ‘He’s a great poet. I met him in Germany. His personality was as fine as his poems.’ ’’ The slender man laughed aloud, “What’s so strange about meeting a famous person?” “Famous people are part of history,” I explained. “One thinks they only live in books. Now, Sattari’s meeting with Nazim Hikmat, as strange as it may seem, could be plausible. But your friendship with Akhmatova is quite bizarre. We’re talking forty, fifty years ago. How old were you back then?” “I told you, I was the same age as I am now,” he says in a serious tone. He completely ignores my confusion. And you can’t tell from his face if he’s joking or not. I don’t know what to say. I’d rather talk to him some more, hoping we get somewhere. I go back to Akhmatova. “Maybe Akhmatova wouldn’t have had much fame outside the Soviet Union, had it not been for the Cold War years.” He stares into the void outside the window. “For many in the West, Akhmatova enslaved in Stalin’s chains took more prominence than Akhmatova the poet. But the truth is she was a great poet. The world is rediscovering her, now that many things have changed. One of the few people who talked about Akhmatova in those days was Isaiah Berlin.” “The British philosopher you mean?” “Not so much a philosopher,” he corrects me gently, ‘as a thinker. And also not British, but Russian. Berlin was in Russia until the age of fifteen. He then immigrated to England with his parents and became a naturalized citizen.” “Really? I didn’t know Berlin was Russian. Now that you say that many things are starting to fall into place for me. His writings on Pasternak and Akhmatova, his book Russian Thinkers.” “Seems like you’ve done a thorough reading of his works,” he says with an air of content. “Actually no. I haven’t read any of his philosophical or political works. But I’ve read everything he’s written on literature. I know he’s written quite extensively on music as well. He’s an interesting man. I read somewhere that he was at some point one of the high-ranking officials of the British Consulate in Moscow and met Akhmatova too.” He looks me in the eye for a second and whispers, “November 1945, in Fontanka, Leningrad.” The café owner who seems to function as a waiter too approaches us with a beautifully delicate wooden tray. Two cups of coffee sit on two flower-patterned saucers, and next to them are two elaborately patterned plates with a knife and fork on the side and a chocolate cake in each. He waits for the slender man to move his arms so he could put the plates and coffees on the table. My companion reaches out to get the coffee cups from him and takes a good whiff with his eyes closed before putting them on the table, “Wow! Thank you so much.” “Noosh-e jan!”, says the owner as he puts the rest of the items on the table. “Can I bring you anything else?”, he asks with the same friendly smile. “No, thank you very much!” says the slender man gently tapping on the owner’s arm. I pick up where we left off. “You must have known Isaiah Berlin too.” “In fact, I somehow arranged that infamous meeting. That same day, I saw him in the Writers Bookstore on Nevsky Prospect in Leningrad. The bookstore was a hub for people looking for old and rare books. That day I was looking for a history book. I overheard someone asking the store clerk about Soviet authors. Among the authors, he was particular about Akhmatova. He wanted to know whether she was still alive. The bookseller knew about my friendship with Akhmatova. So he sent him over to me and basically freed himself from the burden of a headache. Talking to a foreigner, particularly about Anna Andreyevna, was not the wisest thing to do. I told him Akhmatova was still alive and was a friend of mine. “I asked his name and realized he’s the famous Isaiah Berlin whose essays I had read in the journals friends brought from abroad from time to time. He was really eager to meet Akhmatova. I called Akhmatova right then and asked for a time to meet. She was reluctant for a moment. Her son, Lev, had just been released from prison. She didn’t want to get into trouble yet again. But when she heard the man was Russian and was more interested in her poetry than the political stories surrounding her, she agreed to meet with him that same afternoon. That day, I took Berlin to Anna myself.” He raises his cup and cautiously brings it to his lips. Takes a small sip and puts it back on the saucer. I’m confused. I don’t know why he has started this game. I say in complete distrust, “Interesting! You take Isaiah Berlin to Akhmatova in Leningrad half a century ago and are now telling me the story in Iran.” “What’s wrong with me being friends with Akhmatova and bringing a guest to her?” I’m almost losing it. “In that case, you must be a hundred and something years old now.” He laughs aloud. “Don’t be so hung up on time and years. When I met Berlin in London some years ago he spent a whole hour trying to sort out the dates and figure out why I’ve stayed so young. Poor Berlin was even more stunned than you are because he said I hadn’t changed a bit since the time he saw me at the bookstore. He insisted this must be a miracle of nature. Berlin is a rationalist. For him, everything must pass through the filter of logic. That’s why I don’t blame him too much. But why you? You are a man of letters and into poems and poetry. You of all people should take it more easily. What is time after all? An arbitrary line, with past on one side going all the way back to darkness. And future on the other, ending up again in darkness in a step or two. We’ve all somehow accepted this and keep going on with our lives. Sometimes, one of us deviates. We slip to this side of the line being the past, or to the other side being the future. This happens all the time. Look around you. You sure have seen completely unnatural things. A baby born with two heads, or another born with a tail. I don’t know, thousands of such examples. Or a man who dreams of his long-dead father. In the dream, the father gives him directions to a chest full of the money he had saved. The son goes right to the chest and becomes rich overnight.” He laughs playfully. I take a sip of my coffee. It’s thick and bitter but tasty. “Isn’t it delicious?” I agree. “I told you, no one serves a coffee as good as Monsieur’s in Tehran. And the cake. Try some.” The cake is delicious too. Who is this man? Is he mad? Doesn’t seem to be. I remember a few years ago I was at home on a weekend when I heard Vangelis on TV for the first time. The tune always broadcast a few seconds before the news. I suddenly had a strange feeling. A very clear image conjured up before my eyes. I saw myself seated on a chair in a sidewalk patio of a café in a city in Europe waiting for someone. The image was so detailed I could have sketched every bit of it on paper had I been an artist. Even the narrow cobblestoned street on my right winding uphill seemed so real, as if I had walked on it a hundred times. The music was cut and all the images evaporated. A few days later I heard the tune again and the same images reappeared with the same clarity. I must have thought all these aloud because the slender man said, “You don’t believe it so you try to somehow justify it.” “Exactly! I thought maybe I’ve seen the street or the café years ago in a movie with this soundtrack and now I’m pulling those images out from the back of my mind.” The man lets out a short sigh and stares at his half full cup of coffee smiling. “It’s always been like that. Humans have always wanted to find answers to their questions. And when that becomes impossible, they try to somehow convince themselves with a made up answer. Basically they explain things. The reason is very clear. When we get to a point where we can’t understand existence we get nervous. We look for a ray of light in a dark endless desert and at the end we somehow try to hold on to even a flicker of light, heave a sigh of relief and go on with our lives.” He looks like he’s talking to himself. He doesn’t look at me and speaks in a half-voice. Suddenly he looks into my eyes. “So what happened in the end, to your music and dream?” What happened really? Nothing. It’s still with me and every time I hear it I am transported to the same café, same street, same clear images. I feel brave. It’s the first time I’m talking about all this with no fear of being ridiculed. I’m not holding back anymore. Whenever I tell these things to people around me, especially Guity, I waste no time to say I don’t believe in any of it before they start lecturing me. But the slender man has opened the door of a house for me, into which I can step without trepidation and peek into its rooms and back closets. I share another secret with him. “Years ago, a couple of friends and I were going to a pub in Edinburgh, Scottland. I’m sure you know what a pub is. Something like our own qahveh khaneh, coffee houses. One of them suggested we go to the ‘End of the World’ on Cannon Gate street. He said the pub is 200 years old. He asked if I’d been there before. I said I hadn’t. Down the slope on Cannon Gate on our way to the pub, I suddenly remembered the rest of the street and the little shops on it. ‘Do you mean the pub next to the barber’s?’ I asked them. “‘So, you’ve been there before,’ asked the friend who had suggested going there. I said no but I explained all the details of the building and pub’s interior to them. They were in disbelief. Everything was correct down to the last detail. Eventually they believed me when I said I had never been there. One of them said, ‘Sometimes these things happen. The French call it déjà vu.’ And the other joked, ‘The pub has been engrained in mankind’s collective subconscious. God bless Jung’s soul!’ and we all laughed.” The slender man stared at me without smiling. You could tell he was thinking about a distant thought. There was a moment of silence. I ate the rest of the cake. Suddenly as if startled awake he says, “so you too slip to this side of the line sometimes.” He looks serious but I jokingly say, “I try not to slip in any direction.” He ignores my flippant tone. “This is beyond our control. We all do.” “So you must have slipped to the other side. The future.” He doesn’t smile. He agrees. Everything seems complicated all of sudden. I can’t read the situation. “By they way, I don’t know your name yet,” I say. He blinks absentmindedly and says, “Oh, of course. I’ll give you my card.” He reaches into his pocket for an old leather wallet, pulls out a card from one of the small folds, and hands it over to me. It’s a simple card. One side is in Russian and the other side in English. In the middle of the card in fairly large font is written “V. N. Orloff.” With the name underlined, and two words underneath: “Historian, Literary Critic.” At the bottom of the card, on the Russian side, there’s a Leningrad address and a London address on the English side. No phone number. No other words. I thank him. “Can I have your phone number?” “Of course! I’ll give you my phone number and address,” he says eagerly. “I’d be very happy if you’d visit me. I live by myself and have many books on Akhmatova, even her poetry books. You may find them useful.” “I’m sure I will. I would love to see you again,” I say. He looks for a piece of paper on which to write his address. I pull out a small notebook from my bag and rip out a page and give it to him with a pen. In very nice handwriting, in Persian, he writes, “Sohrevardi Jonoubi, South of Russel Pharmacy, Aqiq Alley, No. 53, 2nd floor, third bell from the bottom.” And writes his phone number underneath.
Translator’s Note
Early in my path as a literary translator in Iran, I became familiar with Ahmad Pouri’s translations of Nazim Hikmet, Nizar Qabbani, Pablo Neruda and Anna Akhmatova. Reading Pouri’s masterful translations was nothing short of a directed reading course, an encounter with the translator. In one of my visits to Tehran a few years ago, I chanced upon a novel entitled Two Steps This Side of the Line [Do Qadam Invar-e Khat], this time not translated but written by Pouri. I picked it up and finished reading it in the few remaining days of my stay.
Two Steps this Side of the Line is a novel in seven chapters. The story set in Tehran, London, Baku and Leningrad, centers on Ahmad, an academic who is translating the poems of Anna Akhmatova. One day in a bookstore, he runs into a strange man who claims to be a close friend of the noted Russian poet. The man tells Ahmad that he can arrange a meeting between him and Anna, who has died nearly fifty years ago, but that first he needs to fly to London to collect a love letter Isaiah Berlin has written her and take it to Anna in Russia. To the surprise of Ahmad’s wife and friends, he is dragged into this maze, almost entirely willingly.
That the novel has as its protagonist a literary translator made the decision to translate it an obvious and immediate one. Two Steps this Side of the Line is a story in which poetry and politics intertwine. It is a narrative of many layers: the love story involving Anna and Isaiah, the loveless married life Ahmad is leading, and his inner recollections. History, philosophy and psychoanalysis delicately coalesce in this book.
In another, more recent visit to Tehran, I had the fortune of meeting with Ahmad Pouri and discussed the translation of the work into English. He said he had delayed the thought until now because he wanted whoever translates the novel to ‘own’ the language. I cannot lay claim on owning either of the two languages at play here: my mother tongue, Farsi, or the tongue of my second home, English. With owning, comes proprietorship and with that comes the entitlement to profits and the responsibility for losses and liabilities. All that at the individual level. And language is but a collective act. So I hope I have taken a step to ‘hold’ these two languages with care, here in this translation and beyond. The way one holds a fragile object or entity, like love.
Lida Nosrati is a literary translator. Her poems and translations of contemporary Iranian poetry and short fiction have appeared in The Capilano Review, The Apostles Review, Words Without Borders, Dibur, and Lunch Ticket, among others. She has been awarded fellowships from the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, Yaddo, and Santa Fe Art Institute (as a Witter Bynner Poetry Translation Fellow). She lives and works in Toronto as a Legal Aid Worker in Refugee Law. Photo by Setareh Delzendeh.
Photograph by Mohamad Tajik
Ahmad Pouri was born in Tabriz, northwestern Iran, in 1953. He has translated more than 25 collections of poems and prose narratives including Letters of Chekov and Olga, and Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. His first novel, Two Steps This Side of the Line, was nominated for ‘Once Upon a Time Literary Award’ as well as the top prize of Golshiri Foundation for first-time novelists. His second novel, Behind the Mulberry Tree, failed to get the green light for publication from the Ministry of Culture. He is currently working on his third novel.
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