Sometimes people assume that I can only understand things based on signs and movements of hand gestures. The hand in the mouth means food the number of fingers signify price or value, repetition. The performance of the movement or action shown to be honest is insulting. Though they are unaware of their prejudice I am consciously judging. These sons of bitches look like idiots. I am smarter than them. In the end, I still carry the burden of understanding. After all they just want to get a message across.
Ang Mga Tao
Minsan ipinagpapalagay na mauunawaan ko lamang ang mga bagay sa senyas at kumpas ng kamay. Ang kamay sa bibig ay pagkain ang bilang ng daliri ay bilang presyo o halaga, pag-uulit. Ang pag-arte sa ipinapakitang kilos o paggawa sa totoo ay nakakainsulto. Di man sila malay sa panghuhusga malay akong nanghuhusga. Parang tanga ang mga putang ina. Mas matalino pa ako sa kanila. Magkagayon man nasa akin ang bagahe ng pag-unawa. Nais lamang nilang magtawid ng mensahe.
Translator’s Note:
Lean Borlongan explores disability poetics in the Philippine context, though he doesn’t actively use this label. His poetics lean heavily on the material realities of the country, one that is perpetually in political and economic crisis and alternately lacks the social safety nets for people with disabilities. Borlongan often writes about specific moments in his lived experience, especially affective ones that could be linked to his condition and people’s responses to it. The realization of difference could be immediate or can only be clearer when looking back. The poem ‘People’ belongs to another category, still written in terse and frank verse, where he condenses the sum total of moments, and again arrives at showing both frustration and making do. Because of his accessible language, one might overlook Borlongan’s carefully constructed imagery and tension. In translating, I have attempted to maintain this aura of plainness that actually exposes how deep ableism runs and is considered normal. The poem appears in his second collection, A Different Body (2019), which I have translated in full.
Lean Borlongan graduated from Polytechnic University of the Philippines with a BS in Food Technology and from UP Diliman with a MA in Filipino: Creative Writing. He has authored three poetry books, Sansaglit, sa ibang katawan, and Pasakalye. Pasakalye which was the recipient of the 40th National Book Award and was heralded as the best book in poetry in Filipino by the Manila Critics Circle. He is currently a PhD student in creative writing in Filipino at UP Diliman.
Eric Abalajon’s translations have appeared in Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Northwest, Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation, and Tripwire: a journal of poetics. He lives near Iloilo City in the Philippines.
Once a leaf falls, it can never reattach to the tree again. Leaves dry out, stolen away by the wind, only to die and decay. Covered by soil, only to become food for another tree. That is the law of the jungle. Hold on, did I say the jungle? Yes, that is the correct word, perfectly placed in the sentence, it is merely missing a suitable diacritical mark. It is the law of the jungle. I am nothing but a tiny leaf that prematurely fell off of an old perennial tree filled with solid branches and way more leaves than necessary. Will she feel the absence of a small leaf? A leaf experiencing the feeling of freedom, free from what stopped her from accompanying birds who settled and turned this tree into their home. Birds decide when to leave and when to stay. I wonder how many birds have settled on this tree, which has lived for over two centuries. A vast, huge tree planted in some forest. I believe no one cares to figure out how long it has been alive. I do not even care much about it.
Happiness engulfs the leaf at the first taste of freedom. Surrendering itself to the wind, flying off, dancing, somersaulting in the wind, flattening its palms and not closing them until they face upwards, spinning around itself like a ballet dancer not wanting to land on the ground, ever. Dreams of being a swan, embracing butterflies, giggling at the trickle of a raindrop down its back:
– Oh, you are heavier than I expected. You felt lighter when I was connected to branch fifty-four on the frontal left side. I was closer to the side whereas my sister was closer to the trunk. That made it easier for me to be freed when the wind blew over. I did not have an escape plan. I decided on a whim and went for it. Oh raindrop, do you know that I am grown enough to be free? Away from the aging tree that only seems to shake off its leaves once they dry out, birthing new fresh green leaves, small in size, dancing with every blow of the wind. I overheard people enjoying its shadows say how barren the tree is. If that is the case, then what are we for god’s sake? Aren’t we the children of this tree, ones it does not mind letting go of whenever it pleases, definitely not how we imagined it? Oh you raindrop, you are hindering my movement, can you fall so I can fly off once again?
The leaf sways its body until the raindrop falls. Flies again, day after day until its yellow features come about, losing its power, because of its lightness it begins flying faster. Coming across many trees as it flies away, no one recognizes her though. She almost embraces the sky, believing wholeheartedly that she will become a mother to all the leaves roaming around on this planet. Then weakness creeps in, falling, unable to fly anymore. Focusing its vision on the sky, with the wind blowing, but it’s heavier than to be able to ride the waves of the wind. Becoming too heavy to ride like a magic carpet that will take them to the promised heaven. She thinks of her mother, the enormous aging tree with thousands of branches, if not more. Where is she now? Oh how stupid of a question this is, she must be right where I left her. She should be the one asking where I am! Which land will be my cemetery; dying as a stranger, the homeland will not embrace her, she lost some of her parts, pale, neither green nor yellow, not even gray. It seems as though she became transparent, about to disintegrate, veins are clear as day, is she old enough to pass? Maybe, maybe she was one of those tender ones consumed by death, disintegrating at the sight of all those leaves who lived on the same tree. Those that, one day, fell with her. Are they alright or are they suffering as well, living their last moments somewhere else?
– Maybe, all I know is that the happiness that engulfs me when I fly is incomparable. Remembering its beauty, I do not regret it one bit. For freedom is not cheap and I willingly paid for it.
The leaf whispered to itself, succumbing to the last nap, becoming the mother of freedom, a mother who has no care in this world when it comes to who worships her.
That is me, my story. I was happy to be free upon falling from my tree… My mother told me how, unlike other babies, I did not cry upon birth. I was happy enough to refuse to cry. Doctors said I swallowed too much fluid the moment I was born, causing me to suffocate. Yes, really. My mother mentioned how blue I was, almost purple. None of their attempts worked, they could not get me to cry. It seemed as if crying was difficult for me, as it remains to date and always has been. Maybe it was because I was not touched by the devil, or the devil simply had not formed in front of me. One of the sheikhs whispered to my father when he took me there after doubting if I was a female. They leaned towards thinking that I was a boy whose organs failed to develop fully. As my father had mentioned in the story of my deadpan birth. The sheikh said:
– Do not fret, nothing is wrong with your daughter. No one was able to run from the knick of the devil other than Mary the daughter of Imran and her son Jesus, and your daughter.
My questioning father muttered:
– I still do not understand, is she a boy or a girl?
Perplexed, the sheikh said:
– What do you want me to say? She is most probably a girl, can’t you see her hair? Have you ever seen a boy with hair this long?
– Have you ever seen a girl with a mustache?!
As he was leaving, my father pondered the issue of my being an alien who the devil has not laid a hand on. He stopped and muttered:
– Do you think she is a prophet?
The sheikh went into a laughing fit, answering sarcastically:
– Do not dream too big, is Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) the last prophet with the False Messiah being part of your ancestry?
Laughing loudly, my father thought: Oh that fool, it is only he who is the false messiah. He does not even know how to pronounce ‘Al-Masikh Al-Dajal’ properly, confusing him with Jesus the son of Mary who is being resurrected, oh what a liar.
I spent a whole month in the NICU. During that time, my mother cared for my siblings back home. Was I spoiled? No. But some said I was attempting to be. I never drank my mother’s milk, as it dried up before my lips got the chance to latch on. She would visit me and look as if I was a stranger, looking at me through the glass panel of my incubator, filled with warmth, well-lit with its lamp that never turns off. Given my extreme sensitivity and inability to breathe without a machine, she was not allowed to touch me. Only a month after my birth was she able to fully embrace me. I did not cry when that happened either. I did not ask for her breast, I was content with formula milk that I fed on through a thin nasogastric tube inserted through my right nostril. I remained calm in my mother’s arms with her puzzled looks as if she was meeting me for the first time. I did not return that same look to her. I was used to changes in facial expressions, the only thing I could not comprehend was the hot liquid falling on my face like dew drops falling from the heart of a cloud straight onto my cheeks. Only because of their saltiness did I later figure out that these drops were in fact falling from my mother’s eyes. Later I realized that these were tears. The doctors concurred that I most probably would not be able to speak given that I did not scream even once, saying her throat might not work later on when she tried to speak. I did speak and I did laugh in the end, having conversations like no other. I was known for my exceptional wit, no one could escape my remarks charging at them. Everyone was focused on me, all eyes on me. It seems as if this will only be added to the list of my peculiar characteristics. My loud cackling that always ticked off my mother because it was not fitting for a girl, or my interest in activities that no girl dared to partake in – as my mother says – it did not begin or end with me climbing the outer walls of our house to reach our neighbors’ home. Moving through the walls from one house to another.
– Aren’t you scared of falling? My mother says.
– On the contrary, Mother, it’s fun and exciting. I can easily do it and jump around.
– It looks like I failed to raise you. I have to do it all over again, she said angrily.
I do not pay her much attention though, I continue on with my adventure. It is not as bad as my mother believes, as the taste of Badam in our fifth-floor neighbor’s yard was too delicious for me to share with anyone. Even though our neighbor, Khamees, was a drunkard with whom no one wanted to mess. Every time he saw me, he would utter:
– Oh Suad, it is my first time seeing Badam eating Badam!
With drool forming on my lips, I would answer:
– What do you mean?
I really did not understand what he was hinting at. All I could comprehend was that he might be asking me if I liked eating Badam. I nodded in approval. Sometimes when I encountered his wife, Auntie Sabiha, she would give me some fruits she picked earlier or ones that had fallen from the tree. She would then send me off home quickly before her husband woke up, which hurt me. It would irritate me because I prefer picking my fruit on my own. On so many occasions, I would brush her off to only go back again and pick some fruit without her seeing me. I do not understand her fear for me from her husband’s scathe. He has only ever been kind to me and he enjoyed eating Badam as well.
My mother’s chastising hits were too soft to pain me. My one-month hospital stay post-birth can be credited for her constant fear hanging over me. It looks like a good thing does come out of everything. Here I am, a monkey who is not afraid of anything and does everything. I still remember my childhood when I would play with my brothers and neighbors. Being very stubborn, never taking no for an answer when they tried to kick me out. I was an amazing scorer, leading my team to victory thanks to my left foot which sends the ball straight into the goal. The losing team complains and says they could never get beaten by a girl, disregarding my goals, and saying that our team is simply a bunch of girls for accepting me. Anger fills my teammates so they push me away, which only builds up frustration within me. I launch at them, leaving nail marks on their necks. No kid in our neighborhood escaped the wrath of my long nails. Those who did not experience it had a different experience with my bites. When fighting with someone, I do not stop until tears start streaming down their faces.
I was the only one who did not learn how to cry. I do not remember a single tear falling down my face as a child, not even when my father would hit me after all of my fights when my neighbors snitched on me. Not when he would ban me from having my favorite sweets, giving it to my siblings to enjoy in front of me just so he could shame me into tears and ask for forgiveness. I never did though. Something always stopped me. I do not know what it is, not even the essence of it, all I know is that I possess a feeling of strength that grows whenever I hold back the epitome of my sorrow and sadness. Whenever I would notice their confused looks, it would only make it fester within me. I was convinced that I was right, what was happening to me was abnormal. No one will be able to summon tears out of me. Was it fun? I think it surpassed that point and turned into pride. What I do not understand is why my mother would cry as my father hit me, she kept crying, wailing, saying he was cruel, trying with all of her might to push him away, but he didn’t budge:
– Do you think this pains her? Look at her! Not one tear fell from the eyes of this witch.
Yes, father, I was in pain. The strikes were painful and hurtful, I felt them in my blood. I felt the sting of the whip on my soft skin and body, your stick would dive in, planting itself within my heart. Sometimes, it felt like my heart was about to succumb, but I could not let it. Something is blocking my tears, how can I convince you that I simply cannot do it? It is out of my control. My lacrimal glands are as good as new, I have no health issues, that is what the optometrist told my mother after her worry increased with the lack of tears. The thing is, it was far off from the lacrimal glands, I never knew how to cry to begin with. I would sit with myself at times and try to force the tears out, to no avail. I try to act sad, no, I actually would feel sad. I forcefully close my eyes, rubbing them, lips quivering, allowing them to tremble and fall like a sad crescent. The tears never come, I never cry. Most of the time, I would open up my eyes and chuckle upon seeing myself in this state. I look like a fake clown, one that did not play its role properly.
I still remember when my mother accompanied me to the old lady living across our village, complaining about my lack of tears, the lady muttered:
– You should be thankful! Some women come in complaining about the non-stop wailing and crying of their children. You are the first one to complain of this, do you really want me to place an amulet that would make her scream and cry?
I was two years, five months, and four days old. My memory is insane, it is so great to the point that it surpassed the issue of my lack of crying, having a memory like no other, a memory that does not drop anything it comes across. Asking my mother about that specific day, she only asks one question:
– Who told you about her?
She cannot believe that I remembered it, thinking I was too young to remember such an incident. How do I convince her that no one told me? Convince her of the fact that I really do remember how she took me to the lady wearing a yellow dress dotted with filled and hollow black circles, not as dark as her eyes, for her eyes were grayish in color. She sat there with a hunched back, but when she stood up she did not lean on her stick. She had a full set of teeth as well. Her picture is as clear as day in my mind, what pains me in that memory is my mother’s disbelief in me and her constant scolding me for mentioning it:
– Do not lie, God will send you to hell!
She would retreat then mumble to herself: Who the hell told you though? No one other than me and that lady knew of that visit.
I have always been a level-headed girl, a beautiful child with long black hair and clear hazel eyes. Always played with my sisters. I was never an only girl with six brothers, I was one of seven girls, neither the oldest nor the youngest. I was lost somewhere in the middle, the fourth sister and the seventh daughter out of all thirteen of us. The center of the bunch, as my mother would say, the prettiest of my sisters and, of course, the prettiest amongst my brothers. I would start off the day by playing with my sisters then afterwards I usually played with my brothers in the afternoon. Starting the day by making dolls out of wooden slabs that would look like a cross without really understanding the meaning behind the cross at that point. We would sew clothes for the doll, dress it up, and practice our motherly roles that one day we would fulfill. I never doubted for a second that I would be a mother, with no little girl to sew clothes for, no little girl to dress up. When we take on the roles of mothers and fathers, I always would assume the role of a mother. I knew deep down that it was the prettiest role, the most suitable one for me. When I grew older, I began helping my mother out in cleaning the house and washing clothes, learning how to cook by the ripe age of twelve. I assisted my sisters in sewing the holes in our clothes with our pants having holes right in the center because of our wide steps, or those holes by the knees from our constant falling whilst running on the road or around the yard. Our clothes were undeniably long. My mother says it is because we grow an inch a day. We would tailor our clothes whenever we grew taller, undoing the sewing and properly sewing them back together. Working according to my mother’s plan. A big dress gets tailored to the young ones with a small build to fit them, saving the small clothes for my younger sibling, even if that child is yet to be born. My mother never believed in determining the number of children she would have, she simply believed that a woman is born to breed, and she must do so until God stops it. Otherwise, a curse will fall on her in this life and in the afterlife. This includes women losing all of their children and becoming infertile after choosing not to bear any more children. My mother believes that having a lot of children is merely protection for the parents, as the children will care for them once they grow old. It is the same as their belief that the large number means if she ever loses a child she will forget about the child and be overtaken by the ones already there given their large number. My mother has awry beliefs, but she loves us all even though there are thirteen of us. She gave birth to us and never complained about the long, tiring nights. She still would call every one of us “the light of my eye”.
Translator’s Note:
In The Shadow of Hermaphroditus, Badriyah Al-Badri addresses themes rarely explored in Arabic literature, making it both unique and challenging to translate. The novel stands as one of the first works in the Arab world to delve into the life of an intersex individual, providing readers with a fresh perspective. Al-Badri’s poetic writing brings depth to the struggles of her protagonist, Suad, who faces not only gender dysphoria but also the complexities of family dynamics, relationships, and identity. Suad’s life is shaped by silence and isolation, living as a bystander to her own existence, unaware that an outburst of truth will ultimately free her from the misery she has endured.
Al-Badri’s portrayal highlights Suad’s inner turmoil and the emotional and psychological battles faced by intersex individuals in a society that often seeks to hide or ignore them. The novel presents Suad’s experience without the need to categorize or define her, instead offering a compassionate exploration of her humanity. By shedding light on such a sensitive and underrepresented subject, Al-Badri challenges societal taboos and invites readers into a conversation about gender and identity.
The translation process of this book was quite interesting, as the author shifts from one perspective to another ever so smoothly, allowing you to dive deeper into the book without realizing it. This excerpt showcases what identity is, and tackles its various aspects through personalizing this tiny leaf, using it to project the novel’s scenes and outcomes that have yet to be unveiled. Essentially, I chose this excerpt because the author’s way of bringing the topic about, at the beginning of the novel, prepares you in a poetic way to delve into hard topics, ones that we must speak of nevertheless.
It is essential to raise awareness of issues faced by marginalized individuals around the world, foster empathy, and open up discussions about the often-overlooked struggles of those who live outside traditional gender norms. This is why translating this book is a necessity.
Badriyah Al-Badri is an Omani poet and novelist, known for her works across novels, poetry, children’s literature, and critical essays. Al-Badri has received numerous awards, including the Katara Prize for Prophets Poets, and her works have been longlisted for prestigious honors including Fombi for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2024) and The Adventurous Smoothy for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Additionally, her novel The Shadow of Hermaphroditus won Oman’s Cultural Creativity Award. In 2024, her novel The Last Crossing was translated into English.
Nada Hodali is a Palestinian literary translator. Following her BA in English Language and Literature with a minor in Translation at Birzeit University, Hodali further continued her education and obtained a MA in Translation Studies from Durham University. Hodali’s translation works have been published in ArabLit Quarterly,FIKRA Magazine, with a forthcoming publication in TBA21. Hodali’s first full-length translation, Safaa and the Tent, by Safaa Odah is set to be published in 2025.
Dear comrade major Respected Maj Dear deeply respected Comrade Major Ráday, I’m writing you a letter instead of talking to you in person, because in person it’s not so easy, not so easy to be clear, not so easy to say things intelligibly. Because a hearin Because it would take a long time for me to get an appointment for a hearing through our hierarchically organized system, plus it’d be hard to express my feelings using army language, and impossible using the official terminology of our organization. Especially for me, because unfortunately I have a little stu stu And right now I’m confused, because I’ve always had a clean record, and you maj Comrade Major have always been satisfied with me and you even complimented me on multiple occasions. For example, for my qualifying results I have received 3 complimentary days off, and only 2 tenth of a point was missing for me to reach the rank of Excellent Soldier, and 2 tenth is almost nothing and 2 tenth is nothing. I also won the kilián milit the Gold Kilián Military Exercise Badge. My intention is not to brag, the only reason why I’m mentioning it is because I want to prove that I have always tried hard, so that there would be no complaints about me, and that’s exactly why it hurts me that there is a complaint now. In other words, Comrade Major, when you were the officer on duty you rightfully could have thought that I wanted to make a mockery of the situation when I said when I reported that there are problems with the schedule regarding the guard posts. But there was no intention of mockery on my part, I did not want to mock anyone, and definitely did not want to fuck your life up Comrade Major, as you so kindly expressed yourself Comrade Major. And now I’m turning to You with this petition to ask, to request, if there is a way, Comrade Major, if it’s possible, to please never again appoint me to be the sergeant of the guard. But this doesn’t mean that Do not think that or do not believe that with this request I’m trying to find a loophole to get myself out of my responsibility, or that this is an act of sabotage. Under no circumstances do I want to boycott guard duty. My request only aims at making sure that when it’s our turn next, my wish would be to be a guard, only a simple guard. SO NOT A SERGEANT OF THE GUARD. I hope that I think that my request won’t cause any difficulties, given that we have 4 non-commissioned officers in our company, and 3 of them are corporals: Sarlai, Tóth, Kustyán, and I’m the fourth one, a private first class, and since we get a turn 2 times or at most 3 times every month, there are enough corporals and each corporal will be a sergeant of the guard at most once, and I’m just a private first class anyway, and if you assign them to the position, then there won’t be any need for me. Perhaps certainly Comrade Major you’ll be surprised about my request or will think of it as strange, since non-commissioned officers are always in competition with each other to be the sergeant of the guard, because if one must be on duty then it’s much better to be a sergeant of the guard than to be standing outside at a guard post, though he has a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders, but still, he can sit in the office that belongs to the sergeant of the guard, where he has his own bed, while the guards’ sleeping quarters have 6 beds, hard as a rock, and only 6 people can be asleep at a time, given that another 6 are always on duty outside, and another 6 are on standby, sitting in the guardroom, so overall the number of the guards is 18, plus the 2 who lead the lines of guards, plus the sergeant of the guard, so a total of 21 people 21 persons 21 soldiers 21 men. And there is always a mixed group of guards, usually that’s the case, meaning the 21 men must come from two companies, like for example now it’s our and the gunners’ turn. And last time when we were placed together with the gunners, the sergeant of the guard was chosen from among them, Sergeant Vincze, and this time the sergeant of the guard was from among us, namely me. Because Comrade Major you appointed me. Needless to say I had to make the schedule for the guards, which is the right and the responsibility of the sergeant of the guard. And that’s what caused the hitch in the plan, which I told you about wanted to tell you about Comrade Major, but you were fucking mad at me you yelled at me, when this really is a hitch, and I wouldn’t even have thought how serious of a hitch it was, because until now I had only been a sergeant of the guard once, assigned as a last-minute replacement. Because Colonel Kustyán started to retch like a dog that ate too much at a wedding Because Colonel Kustyán had an upset stomach, and he ended up in the infirmary. But he already had made the schedule, so I didn’t have to. So this was the very first time I had to. There are 6 guard posts and 18 men and they need to be assigned to these posts. The guard posts need to be written down with enough space in front of them and behind them: 1) fuel depot: 2) ammunition depot: 3) firearm repair shop: 4) back fence: 5) front fence: 6) combat machine base: just like this, with colons. And then after each one you have to write 3 names and number them, meaning the 3 men who will be replacing each other in order, 2 hours on duty, 2 hours on standby, 2 hours rest, which means sleeping. In addition, guards need to be assigned to watch the guardroom, where people men guards need to be replaced every hour according to the rules. But since the headcount is 18, and there are 24 hours in 1 day, sadly 6 people will have a turn twice, ergo they’ll do double duty by the guardroom. Of course you have to be careful not to double-book anyone, because no one can be standing by the guardroom and outside at another post at the same time, because it’s impossible to be in 2 places at once. Besides, what makes scheduling more difficult is that those who are on a break who are sleeping they can’t be watching the guardroom, only those can who are on standby, that’s the rule, so that everyone can get enough rest, because a tired guard is no good guard, as they say as we say as you say Comrade Major. It’s not easy to figure all this out, it’s like moving pieces around on a chessboard to make sure that everything works out perfectly. And so I ripped a piece of paper into smaller pieces, and each piece of paper became a guard, meaning that I wrote their names on them. Then all I had to do was push the pieces of paper around on the table, and it all made sense, this method prevented any mistakes, and by dinnertime I was done with the schedule. After that I just had to look it over for the sake of clarity, which is really important, so there wouldn’t be a ruckus or a screw-up. Then I went to sleep, which is irrelevant. I woke up, and I thought it was morning and the alarm was going off. Someone was poking my arm to wake up. This someone was Kóci otherwise known as Private Pali Rákóci. He asked me what the hell was this. What is what, I said, surprised, not understanding what was going on. Private Rákóci then began to mimic me, mock me, said that I stuttered, but it was due to my sleepiness, and yes I did stutter when I was a small child, but it already went away, and it only comes back when I’m tired or upset. By then I could see in the dark that next to my bed stood Lajos, Köcsög, and Kishanák, also Soós, Csik and Hanák, all of them conscripts, fellow conscripts. Fellas, what the f Well, what is it, I asked, wanting to know why they woke me up an hour and a half past our curfew actually an hour and forty-five minutes past our curfew, when I was already asleep, since we had guard duty the next day, and a tired guard is no good guard, and this goes for the sergeant of the guard too, and not even the sergeant of the guard is an exception. They all talked, interrupted each other, said this wasn’t fair, and that I needed to make corrections, and they cursed my mother and swore. It was beginning to dawn on me that they had a beef with me because of the schedule. I suspected this when Kóci, a.k.a. Private Rákóci, shoved a piece of paper in my face and waved it back and forth. I took it away from him, so that he wouldn’t crumble it up, because then I would have to start all over again, and no one wants to do that in the middle of the night. I was beginning to suspect that they were not happy with their shifts. But that was not up for discussion, because this is the army and not a brothel, and it is the sergeant of the guard’s job to do the schedule, and the guards have to obey the order, and a schedule is an order, and the sergeant of the guard, regardless of his rank, is the guards’ superior, which is evident from his title. However, we’re all from the same village, and I’ve known these men since childhood, we’ve been friends forever, and we always stick together and help each other. We always share all the food we receive in the care packages from back home, we offer each other a few bites. Another example of sharing is when Köcsög hooked up with a prostit a woman in the city when he was on a short leave then Kishanák also Anyway the four of us are friends, though this doesn’t matter when we’re on duty, but if someone is raising a ruckus, then we must find out what the hell is wrong with him, especially if that person is a childhood friend. Slowly others around us woke up to the noise, and they were throwing boots and pillows at us and told us to shut up. This was understandable, because they wanted to sleep, especially those who had guard duty the next day, because a tired guard is etc. So I climbed down from the top bunk where I sleep, above Private Rákóci, and therefore we share a locker, which explains why he could have seen the schedule, because I put it in the locker, on top of my folded uniform, so that in the morning it would be easy to grab. But Kóci got to it first. We then went over to one of the classrooms, and I asked what his what their problem was with the schedule. The one I carefully put together and worked on for a long time. In that case, you’re a total jerk, they said. You can all go to hell, damn it, who’s the jerk and why are you calling me a jerk What’s the problem, I asked, as Lajos was separating us. Private Kóci’s nose was bleeding a little, so we told him to tilt his head back. He kept going berserk even with his head tilted back, and insisted that I was a jerk, what’s more, a rotten jerk, because I assigned them to be on guard by the back fence. And that it was the worst guard post, because it’s the one furthest from the guardroom, and that adds extra time to the two-hour shift, because it takes a while for the next shift to arrive, and out of the whole gang they get the short end of the stick, because then they’ll have to do a double shift by the guardroom too, because they’ll be the ones starting there, and then they’ll have another turn later, given how the 18 men fit into a 24-hour schedule. I told them this wasn’t intentional, it just turned out to be this way, and it never occurred to me that this would be a problem. Then Kishanák said that’s exactly the problem. So even Kishanák was throwing a fit, though he was not assigned to the back fence, but to the fuel depot, so I told him that he had no reason to be upset whatsoever, he only had to be by the guardroom once, so he needed to shut the f he needed to stay quiet. But he didn’t stay quiet, and Lajos thought that Kishanák was right about the fuel depot, it wasn’t the best place either, because it had a large area surrounding it, and there wasn’t even an actual guard post there, so if it rained that meant you got bronchitis right away. And then Köcsög chimed in too and told me that I was seriously fucking with my friends by assigning them to the worst posts, and it was really mean and they didn’t expect that from me. By then they were so upset that all four of them talked at the same time. I showed them the pieces of paper, this wasn’t my fault, there are six guard posts and 18 pieces of paper, plus the guardroom, not to mention those who are on standby, so it wasn’t easy to make everything work out well, but fine, I’ll rewrite the damn schedule just to make them happy. That’s the least you could do for us, said Kóci, his head still tilted back. That made me mad, why was he being such a jerk, when I could just totally refuse to rewrite the schedule, this is the army, not a brothel, and I was willing to do it only for the sake of our friendship and so on. He told me not to heckle them, which was a totally maddening thing to say, who do they think they are, I was so polite to them, and that’s how they behave, accusing me of heckling them, who the hell is heckling them, it’s not me that’s for sure, they can go f They are idiots, and when Private Köcsög pinned me to the ground my nose started to bleed too, and they told me to tilt me head back, you idiots, don’t you think I already know that you’re supposed to tilt your head back So then, just to show them who they were dealing with, I started to assign them to different posts, fine with me, but truth be told it was a lot of extra work, especially at night, especially with my nose bleeding. And I kept moving around the pieces of paper until everything got rearranged, and that took a long time, but in the end I was able to assign Privates Rákóci and Soós to the ammunition depot for first and second shifts, and Privates Csik and Hanák to the combat machine base, also first and second shifts, this way all four of them will have to be by the guardroom for only one hour, and from there the ammunition depot is the closest guard post, and the combat machine base isn’t too far either, it’s the third closest. Here you go, I showed them, now you can all go to hell, you can all go to sleep, because a tired guard is etc., and I still have to look everything over, you can all kiss my ass good night. But they didn’t go to sleep at all, and instead they came to me with a new request, which was beyond rude. That they want to be assigned to the firearm repair shop. Because that’s the best guard post, and they want to go there. They want to. Just like that. First of all, I told them that it was impossible, because only 3 guards could be assigned to one post, and there were 4 of them. No problem, they said, I should assign 3 of them to the firearm repair shop, and 1 to the ammunition depot. What can you say to that? They wanted that setup because the firearm repair shop, the number 3 post is only a night post, so unlike the other guard post, a guard is only needed there from 8 at night till 8 in the morning, which is a total of 12 hours, and therefore each guard has to stand there only half the time as elsewhere, meaning 2 hours 2 times. This is very advantageous. And that’s why they wanted to be at the firearm repair shop, because being there is kind of like a half shift, and during the day they could hang out in the guardroom. And the ultimate and rudest request was that they wanted me to make the schedule from now on so that they would have to watch the guardroom only once. So basically they were looking for the easier solution, the easiest solution there was. But I objected. Because that would be me doing favors for them. Just because they were my friends, why should they do half as much as the others, how would that look, I asked. But they said I shouldn’t question anything, when I had the nerve to give the asshole gunners the post next to the firearm repair shop. Have you lost your mind? they asked furiously, saying that this was really mean to our company too, this and that, and they kept scolding me. I decided to remain calm no matter what, so I quietly told them that I paid no attention to who was a gunner and who wasn’t, the only thing I cared about was that the shifts worked out evenly, the guardroom watch, the standbys, and the rest periods, so that everything would be in order. In that case, we don’t give a shit about you, they said, how terrible that you’re not willing to do any favors for your friends, then our friendship isn’t worth anything. Don’t even joke about that, I said, because our friendship is a serious matter, and I’ve always respected it. Fine, they said, then assign us to be by the firearm repair shop, otherwise there will be no friendship. Then there is no friendship, I said, having seen that they’ve completely lost their minds. You idiots, nothing is good enough for you, I rearranged everything just for you, which was a lot of work, screw it all, I’m not going to do you any favors, so that I could be accused of cheating the system for the sake of my friends. There is no cheating, they said as they attacked me, somebody had to be assigned to the firearm repair shop, and if you don’t assign that post to us then you’ll assign it someone else, and if you don’t favor us then you’ll favor someone else, and if someone is going to get lucky then why should the asshole gunners be the ones and not us. It’s really interesting, they said, that when the sergeant of the guard is from among the gunmen, then he always sends our men to the back fence, so basically to the shittiest posts, and that’s a fact. Because everyone favors their own, one hand washes the other, that’s how it goes. And they yapped and jabbered, so nothing could be discussed with all that noise. But nothing had to be discussed, said Private Rákóci, all I had to do was put their names down. And then I didn’t know what to do. It was already eleven thirty, so very late. I hesitated. Because truth be told, I don’t like injustice. In my family my father only beat us children, me and my four siblings, if we lied or if someone took someone else’s things. And we always shared our food fairly among us. And everything else too. Because that’s the way to do it. When back in school we learned that during the French Revolution there was LIBERTY EQUALITY FRATERNITY, I liked it so much that I wrote it on the wall in our house. And my dear mother got very upset, because the interior walls had been freshly painted, though that is irrelevant. And ever since then this has been my motto. Plus equal pay for equal work, because when I was working for a bricklayers’ brigade, and the foreman didn’t want to pay me for the days when there was no work, because I was a newbie, the others stood up for me. For justice. Because that’s more important than anything and it must be respected. But the same goes for friendships. Like when Kóci saved me from a fishpond where I was drowning. That’s why I didn’t die back then. And that autumn I helped build their house every Sunday with Lajos and Köcsög and Kishanák. Because we always knew that we had to stick together. And when some kids from the last row of houses in our village wanted to beat up Köcsög because of a girl named Borcsa, we protected him. Because we knew that it wasn’t fair, because Borcsa was a slut and a bad woman. Or when they wanted to throw the lame Singer out of the pub, we didn’t allow it, because it was unfair that he couldn’t drink there just because he is a Swabian and is handicapped. And later that night we had a nice little talk with the bartender behind the pub about how things should be and then we kic Because we always But right now Currently I was at a loss. The arguing continued, during which my 4 friends my 4 fellow comrades spoke against me, attacked me, and I was completely confused. Because once again they claimed that if I don’t assign them to the post next to the firearm repair shop, then I’m going to fuck with them ruin it for them. Because then they’ll get the short end of the stick, whether or not their friend is in charge. And at the same time others will benefit from their loss. And that’s not fair, said my friends. But it was all a bit murky. Because when the president of the state agricultural corporation in our village appointed his lover to be the leader of the fishermen’s brigade, then we were all up in arms that it was unfair and a deception. And this is the same situation now if I assign my friends to be at the good guard posts, even though friends are not the same as lovers, but still. I became discoura I became disheartened. Kóci and the others were relentless, saying that everyone was doing it this way. So that means everyone is a crook. This is not cheating the system, replied Kishanák, because today it’s my turn, tomorrow it’s yours. Sooner or later everyone will get a turn. What goes around comes around. But my father always said that if someone jumped into a water well, we shouldn’t jump in after him, meaning if someone does something stupid, it doesn’t mean that we also If someone cheats the system, that doesn’t give me the right to cheat too, because the most important thing is justice. But Kóci is my They are my frien So this makes no sense to me whatsoever. I have to think about it. But while I was thinking, Kóci and the others left me behind, they were mad, they slammed the classroom door really hard, and that woke others up on the other side of the wall, and then I heard boots being thrown against the wall, that’s where they threw them, rightfully so, because they couldn’t sleep, and as we know, a tired guard is etc. So I found myself left alone, with the schedule in my hands, to be exact, without the schedule, because Köcsög tore up the original one, and he and the others threw the strips of paper all over the room, so I had to start everything from square one. And by then it was 1:45 a.m., and I didn’t have another piece of paper, and going into the room where everyone was sleeping was dangerous, it was best to wait until everyone fell back asleep, or they’d throw things at me, so I waited. Suddenly it was morning, and I woke up with my head on a table, my whole body hurt, and there was no new schedule. The morning bugle call had already sounded, we had to go wash up, and get dressed. Kóci and the others didn’t even acknowledge my hello, they turned their heads the other way, what idiots, what should I do now, what should be next. I thought about going over to the gunners to talk to them. I wanted to tell them that I will assign my friends to the firearm repair shop, but not because I wanted to show favor toward them, but for the sake of justice, and because the gunners always do the same thing for their friends too. The gunners can surely understand this no matter what big assholes they are. But what happens to those priva to those men What happens to those who don’t have any friends, what will happen to them, then they’ll simply be always screwed they’ll always be unlucky. For example Private Fenyvesi is a nice guy too, but he’s just like my godfather, he’s on bad terms with everyone, kind of an introvert, so he must always get the worst of everything the worst of the worst, and that’s really unfair, regardless of what Kóci says. Maybe we should draw lots to decide the order, we should pull names out of a hat, let fate decide. But if I draw lots, it would be in vain if, for example, the gunmen didn’t draw lots, then everything would be out of order again, and that would be unfair, even though I drew lots, but the others always favor their friends their buddies their comrades, you scratch my back I scratch your back. Which means that this system wouldn’t work either. Finally I thought I decided that I would seek your advice Comrade Major, because Comrade Major you always say that you’re a strict man but a fair man, which is true, and therefore by now Comrade Major you must understand why I asked permission to report to you when you Comrade Major ordered us to be at ease during the changing of the guard, but it was definitely a mistake that I didn’t come to you sooner, but there was never any time, and without a guard schedule it is not wise to go the guardroom, so that moment right there was my last chance. And that’s why I asked for permission to report to you, Comrade Major, then I corrected myself and said that I wanted to ask your permission to ask a question, to seek your advice, which surprised you which made you mad, you yelled at me, told me do not ask questions now, private, you’re on duty not in summer school, which made the other guards laugh. But I had to continue because of the schedule, and I started to tell you the problem, what the hitch was, but Comrade Major you didn’t hear me out, because by then of course I was stuttering, so you yelled at me, you distinctly ordered me not to take you for a fool, otherwise you’d slap me across the face so hard that my testicles would fall off, and that any hitches I have I should take up with my f-ing mother. I wanted to further explain, but I couldn’t stop stuttering, the guards were laughing and Comrade Major you were really upset, told me not to fuck your life up, and if I didn’t shut up, you’d have me thrown in jail, and we privates are wrong if we think we rule the world, and this is the army not a brothel, and you Comrade Major are a good man, but only until we make you lose your patience. And you said you were disappointed in me because you thought I was more serious than that, and how could I spew stupidity in front of you when it wasn’t even April 1st. What hurt me the most Comrade Major was that you thought that you assumed that when all I wanted was to be fair to everyone strict but fair but then there was so much commotion in the guardroom that I just randomly assigned the guards and everyone grumbled and the whole thing turned into a shitshow and therefore I’m asking you to please never again appoint me to be the sergeant of the guard because now I’m totally confused and there is a big lump in my throat from trying to hold back my tears because kóci spit at my feet when a fellow guard was taking him to the front fence guard post even though we’ve been inseparable since childhood and I will make sure that they will each have guardroom duty only once, 1 shift for lajos, 1 for köcsög, and 1 for kishanák, 1 and only 1 shift
Translator’s Note:
“Petition (rough draft)” is a recalcitrant and darkly amusing short story written by renowned Hungarian author Miklós Vámos. Its dense plot propels readers into the epicenter of one of the most intimidating places: the army, more specifically, the Hungarian army of the seventies. The title includes the words “rough draft,” because that’s the joke on which the nontraditional writing style hinges, as readers will realize the moment they start reading. The story is written as if it were an actual rough draft of a letter that a private is writing to his major.
Buoyed by a sharp sense of humor and authenticity, the plot is inspired by real-life events, and it shines a light on a grueling collective experience unfamiliar to most of us nowadays. The narrative depicts the multilayered, complicated, and emotionally charged connections among soldiers during their time spent together. Once young men were conscripted into the Hungarian army, they became members of a community where they had to live together in tight quarters, endure rigorous training, and navigate the everyday unpredictability of a harsh environment that did not pamper or cater to its members. Mandatory military training existed in Hungary (and many other Warsaw Pact countries) for decades and, per the author’s admission, the time he had to spend in training as a private—right before he started his first year at the prestigious Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in the early eighties—was one of the darkest periods of his life.
It is the author’s desire to show what it felt like to be under the thumb of an authoritarian organization that not only thrived on constantly intimidating its so-called family members, but it also tested and provoked the strength of lifelong friendships, as it is painfully evident in this seemingly simple story that carries a lot of weight. Eastern European army officers in charge of military training during the Cold War years (and beyond) were feared authoritarian figures, whose shadows haunted their inferiors for years on end. Writing this story during the time when Hungary was still a communist country was a bold move; its ferocious honesty and genuine tone could have gotten Vámos in a lot of trouble. Yet, it somehow managed to go under the radar, and even got published in a literary magazine shortly after it was written. Since then, it has been published numerous times as part of a collection of short stories still in bookstores today.
Rendering the tangled up thoughts of this small-town young private into English was truly a unique experience. He is nervous and struggles to put his thoughts on paper because he has no previous experience writing a letter like this. He tries his best to come up with the proper words to address an irksome issue with his major, but his thoughts spread out into many directions, yielding a writing style that is unsteady but really funny. I made sure to keep to the same abrupt halts that are present in the original in order to mimic his burgeoning thoughts. I enjoyed surrendering myself to the respectful but unsophisticated tone of a narrator who often stops and restarts mid-sentence (sometimes even mid-word) while recounting personal anecdotes to make his case in hopes of bettering part of a rigid tiered system. Finding the right rhythm was a delightful task not only because it was somewhat challenging, but also because despite the tense premise of the story, it was immensely entertaining and had me laugh out loud numerous times. Last but not least, it is important to mention that the young private has a stutter that comes out when he’s nervous or tired; while it is only subtly present in the letter, it is always present in his mind and is also mentioned a few times throughout the letter when he recalls difficult moments.
Miklós Vámos is a Hungarian writer who has had over forty books published, many of them in multiple languages. His most successful book is The Book of Fathers, which has been translated into nearly thirty languages, including English. Vámos’s ancestors on his father’s side were Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Fortunately, his father, a member of a penitentiary march battalion, survived. In an effort to save himself from his chaotic heritage, he turned to writing novels. His selected writings have appeared in various publications, including Asymptote, the Forward, Hungarian Literature Online, The New York Times, and Tablet.
Ági Bori originally hails from Hungary, and she has lived in the United States for more than thirty years. In addition to translating between Hungarian and English, her favorite avocation is reading Russian short stories in the original. Her translations and writings are available or forthcoming in 3:AM, Apofenie, Asymptote, The Baffler, B O D Y, the Forward, Hopscotch Translation, Hungarian Literature Online, Litro Magazine, Maudlin House,The Rumpus, Tablet, Trafika Europe, Turkoslavia, and elsewhere. She is a translation editor at the Los Angeles Review.
A staircase: if you cared to know, where and how it continues … two window frames stand in the way, and they are essential to the whole composition. From a city you think you know, or at least, you’ve made use of as an image. Simply the name
would serve as a reminder of a story that speaks of the centre, the establishment, melting away on all sides. In the background, façades that are perhaps only pasted on, glued onto an interior that was, in turn, the backdrop to a soliloquy … we are speculating; we switch off the radio and inspect the vertical lines of windows, from bottom to top, where a vacant, grey surface begins. The next question, and it’s what comes now in the running-order … it always gets faster and faster, even if the staircase is still the staircase.
So, from the top. The window frames stand around, and if nothing else happens there remains a stock of simulations. Without instruction we do not act, and then there must still be time, long enough, to stand up on the step, on the flight of stairs.
Autumn story
A drawing, or perhaps just a scribble … I had tried to give the old, drooping pear tree some kind of support. But the bracing of pencil strokes failed. Now, for a few days, the fog has prevailed here, and today it has made it impossible to see anything at all. It has been like this for years, structures, frosts, owls in flight, September wars.
Translator’s Note:
Given his 1000 page Collected Poems (Suhrkamp, 2022), it’s remarkable that Jürgen Becker’s work has been so little translated into English. The translator’s difficulties tend not to lie not in his word choices (Becker plainly describes, he states), but, to some degree, in his cultural references, and, primarily, in dealing with his style of montage-composition, his commitment to ‘the apparently incidental’. The poem ‘City you think you know’ is particularly interesting from this point of view as it draws on pictorial art by Rango Bohne (who was Becker’s wife). In her practice, he found a blending or combinative technique at work which he (has said) he often practiced in his writing to produce a collage-like linking of disparate, contrasting elements, such as motifs of landscapes, architectural structures, window views, groups of figures. As a result, Becker’s porous verse contains multitudes: perspectives, voices, inner and outer events, photos, maps, postcards, news, weather reports. In the act of translation, it can be hard to flex (as it were), to permit these into English, and I have had to learn to trust Becker’s arrangements of them into long, semi-colon linked passages, utterly remote from conventional ‘lyric’. Though perhaps not such a characteristic work (in its brevity!) but in a phrase from these poems that captures something essential about Becker’s oeuvre ‘Autumn story’ concludes with, ‘It has been like this for years, / structures, frosts, owls in flight, September wars.’ As to his life, Becker grew up in Thuringia, Germany, which, following World War II, found itself in the Soviet occupation zone, later the GDR. However, by that time, the family had re-located to (then) West Germany, and, after the reunification of the two Germanies in 1990, he would often return to these remembered childhood landscapes and write about them. These two poems were published in his 1993 collection, Foxtrot in the Erfurt Stadium.
Jürgen Becker was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1932 and died there in 2024. He is the author of over thirty books—including drama, fiction, and poetry—all published by Suhrkamp, Germany’s premier publisher. He has won numerous prizes, including the Heinrich Böll Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize, the Hermann Lenz Prize, and the Georg Büchner Prize, the highest honour a German-language author can receive.
Martyn Crucefix is a poet and translator. He is the author of seven original collections of poetry, most recently Between a Drowning Man (Salt, 2023) and Cargo of Limbs (Hercules Editions, 2019). His translations of Peter Huchel’s These Numbered Days (Shearsman, 2019) won the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize in 2020. His translations of essays by Lutz Seiler, In Case of Loss, is published by And Other Stories (2023). His translations of Rilke selected poems, Change Your Life, is published by Pushkin Press (2024). Blog and website at martyncrucefix.com.
The students of Grade Two Section Perseverance of Sta. Presincula Academy seemed harmless and ordinary. It was their honor, under the gaze of the merciful Mrs. Sinistra, to erase the writings on the blackboard before and after each class. Every recess, everyone (except, of course, those who didn’t have the money) would crave the custard candies, chocolates, and rice crispies that the principal sold for cheap. The girls would happily cut their paper dolls, while the boys would sneakily explore the secrets of life behind the custodian’s house.
If the children were asked what they want to be when they grow up, a lot of them would say, “I want to be a doctor to help the sick,” or “I want to be a lawyer to defend the poor.” But in the deepest corner of their minds (and this they wouldn’t admit to anyone), what they really wanted was to be the principal (or the director, or even the owner) of Sta. Presincula Academy.
They’ve never seen their teachers go home at the end of the day. So they thought that they all must be living there in the school grounds.
“Maybe they’re studying too when we’re not around.”
“But who teaches them?”
“Who else—the principal!”
“So the principal lives here too?”
“What do you think, dummy.”
“So that must be why they know about everything…”
“No, stupid. They’re still studying about everything, of course. But everything we know, they already know. So that thing you all do behind the custodian’s house, the Madam knows about it too.”
And in time, even the things the children still didn’t know, the Madam would’ve already known too. She was about to catch up with them, and get ahead of them even, and the mere thought of it terrified the children.
But everything was about to change. Because one day, when some of them once again didn’t bring their monthly donation of floor wax to the school, Mrs. Sinistra wanted to discuss in class the difference between a house and a home. She was hoping to etch on the students’ minds that their classroom was not just a house but a home they have to keep tidy and beautiful.
“What is a house and what is a home, and how are the two different?” she began. She scanned the room to find the face of the student who hasn’t brought floor wax for three months.
“You, Leticia,” she called out.
“Madam, a house—” the student paused to think. “A house is a place where people eat, live, and play.” The young girl was somehow pleased with her own answer, especially with those last three verbs—live, eat, and play.
“And what about a home?”
The girl couldn’t answer. So she was called to the front and asked to write A house is not a home on the board for a hundred times.
Mrs. Sinistra’s vocabulary was difficult, Ido thought as he picked his nose. Like metaphors, he thought. And he remembered his poet neighbor who taught him the words vocabulary and metaphor.
“Madam,” Froilan raised his hand. “Sister Mary Jo said, the house could either have or not have love. But a home needs to have love. That means a house might not have anyone living in it. But a home needs people inside it. When no one’s in it, it isn’t a home, it’s just a house.”
“Ah, very good,” praised Mrs. Sinistra, even though she thought that the nun could’ve taught them a little bit more. Nevertheless, she could already use the boy’s answer to finally move to the subject of floor wax.
“Madam.” Another child who also hasn’t brought the required floor wax for quite sometime raised his hand.
“Yes, Lino?”
“Can you tell us what abaloryo means?”
The teacher didn’t expect the question, and she was sure it had a malicious intent. Her face briefly showed surprise, but only for a very brief while. But that look of surprise on her face was something the children would never get off their minds because they’d always remember it.
Mrs. Sinistra felt her table, looking for her stick, as a swarm of bees seemed to suddenly came from nowhere, buzzing loudly inside her head.
“Keep quiet! Keep quiet!” she shouted, hitting the table with her stick, though no one made a noise other than Leticia, with the tingling sound of chalk on the blackboard. The whole class was quiet because they now had the same question as Lino, and they were all eager to hear their teacher’s answer.
Mrs. Sinistra sat down and looked up at the ceiling. Aab, aba, abaka, abakada, abahin, abala… She sifted through the rolodex in her head. A-ba. Like a swelling belly. Lor-yo. Like a release from this. Abaloryo. Not human, nor animal.
Toribio thought that it must be a bird sent by God, singing Abaloryo! Abaloryo! after the evening vesper. Anabelle wrote the word in her notebook, drawing flowers around it: roses, gumamelas, gladiolas. She thought of coloring her drawing and putting it in a frame, then giving it to her beloved father. Meanwhile, Bona teared up a little, remembering her dead sister whose name was Loreta Rosario.
“Where did you get that word?” Mrs. Sinistra asked Lino, still shooing away the bees in her head with the stick.
Lino still had his hand raised even after asking his question. It was the first time he has done so in class, so his seatmate even had to lower his hand for him. “I found it in a book, Madam.”
Mrs. Sinistra was about to ask which book when Froilan raised his hand again.
“Madam, I heard that word once from my grandpa, when his spirit haunted his own wake.” When he realized that no one believed him, Froilan simply carried on with a barrage of questions. “But Madam, what is abaloryo? Is it a word in English or Filipino? And how is it different from a house and home?”
“All right, all right,” the Madam let out a deep sigh. She finally gave up. “Let us all find out what abaloryo means. So now, that will be your assignment,” she ended, the bees still buzzing in her head.
That morning, no one volunteered to erase the writings on the blackboard. Leticia’s writings remained there until the next day. (And though these would also be eventually erased, some say they’d still reappear on the board especially after it rains and the chalks are all wet.)
That same morning, no one also bought custard candies, chocolates, and rice crispies from the principal’s office. So the principal was quick to call a meeting to discuss the poverty in their school and how it could be resolved soon.
After classes, no one loitered around. No one lingered on the streets to play with tin cans, to run around, to chase one another. No one turned on the TV in their homes. No one even waited in front of their houses for the passing of the ice cream vendor. All the children stayed inside, flipping through their dictionaries. And those who didn’t have one went to those who did.
One of the houses they visited was Lino’s. His family had an English-Filipino Filipino-English dictionary left behind by an American missionary because it was too heavy for his luggage. Several neighbors tried convincing the family to let them borrow the dictionary and bring it home for a day or two. But Lino’s mother would always refuse. Because just like that night, even from the kitchen sink, she closely watched her son by the light of a lamp searching through the thick book, oblivious to the mosquitos going in and out of his ears.
“Lino, memorize everything written there (whatever’s written there) as early as now, so you’ll grow up smart,” the mother told her son.
The next day, all the children had new words for Mrs. Sinistra. Romulo asked what braggadocio means and how to use it in a sentence. Prima asked about the mala-’s she found: malakolohiya, malagihay, malagunlong, and malainibay. Mrs. Sinistra wanted to add to the list her own set of words: malala, malamlam, malarya, and malas. Leticia asked what summum bonum means and how is jure divino different from deo volente. The teacher still hadn’t answered any of the questions when five more children raised their hands.
“Keep quiet! Keep quiet!” Mrs. Sinistra told them off, hitting the table with her stick. The Madam hit the table a little harder today because she wanted to be as vicious as she felt her students were by raising their hands at once. “Keep quiet! Keep quiet!” she went on, even as she laid in bed that night.
But instead of keeping quiet, the children decided to come up with their own rules. Every day from then on, they’d bring a new word to the class. And whoever brings a word that Mrs. Sinistra already knew would get a punishment. They would be the one to stay in the classroom during recess to comb out the lice and pick out the dead and white strands of hair off their teacher’s head. Because of these rules, no goody two shoes has since stayed in the classroom to serve their teacher. And so the lice and the dead and white strands of hair multiplied on Mrs. Sinistra’s head fast. “Where are you, my children,” she’d often say, making sure they hear her call whenever they passed by without even turning to look through the window of their room.
One day, when all that was left on the Madam’s head were dead and white strands of hair, she went to class with a smile on her face. Behind her, the Quasimodo Mang Igna, the school custodian, followed. He carried a big and thick book they had probably found in the garage (which they really did, as we will see in a bit). Mang Igna carefully put it down on the Madam’s table.
“Children, gather around. I have a surprise for all of you,” Mrs. Sinistra announced to the children, shooing Mang Igna away. Mrs. Sinistra was too excited that morning that she forgot the early morning prayer and daily health and hygiene inspection before starting the class.
“Gather around,” she said again.
The children obliged, standing up to go to their teacher’s table. Some did stay in their seats, as they thought Mrs. Sinistra was about to sell their school’s official papers, official pencils, and official crayons (just like how the principal sold the offical custard candies, official chocolates, and official rice crispies in her office).
“Do you know what this is?” the teacher said, pointing to the book on her table. With its width and thickness, it might as well be the Book of Life that lists the names of those who are holy and those who are evil. A rough gray cloth, or perhaps it had a different color that just turned gray in time, wrapped its hard cover, gnawed and chewed on by rats. Loose ends of fibers hung from the spine and corners of the book.
“This is a scrapbook,” the teacher went on. The children were surprised that Mrs. Sinistra answered her own question. Because only moments earlier, they didn’t know what to do. If they made a guess and gave a wrong answer, she might end up pinching their ears. But if they said, No, Madam, we’re sorry but we don’t know, that also wouldn’t be good, because in their classroom, they were never allowed to say I don’t know.
“And do you know what a scrapbook is?” the teacher asked again. And to answer her own question once more (because she also knew that only she could answer it), she opened the scrapbook somewhere in the middle.
The children were amazed with what they saw. The pages were clean! Despite its thickness, the book turned out to be empty. The paper was turning yellow, blending with the rust-colored stains on the margins.
Some of the students got excited. They thought that this might finally be the book that Mrs. Sinistra would ask them to read from then on. Meanwhile, others were suspicious, thinking this must be a trap somehow. They believed that their teacher was about to get back at them for all the strange words they previously asked her.
“Madam, what is it for?” Pipito dared to ask, even though he had the smallest voice in the class.
“Children, last night, God gave me this idea in a dream. Don’t you all love words? You’re all so in love with words, yes? So now, why don’t we start writing our own dictionary?”
But how? Do they have to pay for anything? And how much? The eyes surrounding Mrs. Sinistra had so many questions. They all wanted to ask Why, but the teacher would often get annoyed with such a question.
“Bring a new word to school every day. Share it to the rest of the class by writing it here on our scrapbook.” The teacher patted the book to make sure that they all understood where they should direct their new words from then on. “We shall call this our class pet project. Let’s all say it again one more time—our class pet project.”
At first, the children were hesitant to go near the scrapbook. The Madam placed it on a shelf near her table. And so for a time, the scrapbook and Mrs. Sinistra seemed to be one.
But in the next few days, someone noticed that the first page finally had something written on it. Everyone was shocked because they saw the haunting handwriting of their classmate: a house is not a home.
But this only encouraged others to write something themselves. Ido wrote his new word: alatwat. Meaning, “the echo of another echo.” He heard it from his poet neighboor, who was looking then for a word to rhyme with watawat (meaning, “flag”).
They never agreed that everyone should have a word beginning with the letter a, so Emilio wrote the word yutyot. Meaning, “the shaking or jerking of something.” All of his classmates, especially the boys, giggled. Since that day, they called him Emilio Yutyot.
Some wrote down words from English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French, Latin, etc. But the Visayan Bona added the most words out of everyone. Words she claimed to have come all the way from across the sea.
They also wrote down words they were called in the streets or sometimes in their own homes. Words like letse, hayop, demonyo, lintik, and putang ina. They even had a long discussion whose mother was this putang ina, and if there’s a putang ina, how come there’s no putang ama, putang ate, putang kuya, putang lolo, and putang lola so they could all be together as one happy family. So they added all of these to their dictionary. They decided that the mother shouldn’t be alone in being a puta.
Because they could write anything in their scrapbook, they wrote down the words they’d often hear the adults say when they fool around but which they themselves weren’t allowed to say out loud. Words like pekpek, uten, kiki, titi, hilat, hindot, etc.
Some also added words they came up with to name things they thought still didn’t have any name. For example, what do you call an ice cream that has dripped and melted on the ground? Or a belt when it is being used to hit someone? Edmund came up with the word isplanksrrripdagbladag. According to him, this was the noise that cats make when they walk on tin roofs.
Others, instead of writing the meaning of their words, drew it. Some painted while others pasted cut-outs. Some wrote poems, riddles, and songs. Some even wrote entire biographies for their words.
While other students in the school were busy playing trading cards and rubber bands, the entire Grade Two Section Perseverance was obsessed with their dictionary project. Every day, more words were added to the scrapbook. Only few pages to go and they would have completely filled it up.
They finally stopped pestering Mrs. Sinistra. The teacher should have been happy with the dictionary, but she was not. The truth was, she felt annoyed whenever she saw it. The book lay quietly on the shelf, but it always reminded her of the things that her students knew but she herself did not. And as she taught her classes, its presence felt like that of another teacher in the classroom. The teacher whom the students trusted more, listened to more.
Her children picked up such a really weird hobby, Mrs. Sinistra thought. It didn’t seem to suit their young age. And what if their parents complained? What should she do with the dictionary whose very idea she herself came up with? She remembered how just the other day, after an entire afternoon of rain, termites swarmed the old shelf where the dictionary lay. But before the insects could even reach the book, the children had already killed them all with their bare hands. Not a single termite survived. Mrs. Sinistra shuddered from what she saw. She would never admit it to herself, but she felt a flash of fear from the children she was teaching.
For her peace of mind, Mrs. Sinistra talked to the school priest about it. The priest didn’t believe in malignant spirits, but he believed that a ritual could help ease people’s minds. He agreed to bless their classroom. But he was going to do it in the afternoon, once the students had all gone home.
When he arrived, the priest wore a plain polo shirt and an old pair of jeans. Not a habit as Mrs. Sinistra had expected. It was already five in the afternoon when they began to pray. There were only three of them in the room, the priest, the teacher, and the custodian.
Nothing terrifying happened. No strong wind blew out the lit candles. No door nor window closed on its own. And no object, big or small, flew around, which was just how Mrs. Sinsitra imagined it would go. That afternoon passed just like any other afternoon, except from then on, Leticia’s handwriting stopped showing itself on the blackboard, on the walls, and on every other surface where one could write.
“Do not fear,” the priest advised her before finally leaving. And it was exactly what Mrs. Sinistra did.
The next day, the scrapbook was no longer on the shelf. The students looked for it in every corner of their classroom but failed to find it.
“There’s only one person who could’ve stolen it,” John Jorge said. And there’s really only one person they had in mind—their classmate Ade. Why Ade? Well for one, she hasn’t come to school, so she must be guilty. And then, she’d always ask them for a piece of paper instead of buying from Mrs. Sinistra. Sometimes, she’d even ask them for food. She probably wanted to keep the dictionary for herself because they didn’t have one at home, but she was also probably too shy to admit it.
So they decided that later that afternoon, they would all go to Ade’s house. It was their chance to finally be like the heroes in the movie Kontra Bandido (1986).
Mrs. Sinistra told them off. She reminded her students that it’s not good to blame someone without any proof.
The Madam wasn’t the least bit angry when she scolded them. In fact, she even smiled at them. When she finally sat down after her sermon, the Madam was still smiling. It was the second time the children saw their teacher smile for that long. They could still remember the only other time she did.
The teacher went quiet for a while to savor the relief she felt. Her birthday was coming up, she remembered. Why not invite the students to her house? She’d definitely do that, she decided. So on that day, the students were also about to learn that their teacher didn’t really live in the school grounds.
Where the scrapbook ended up is an entirely different story. The truth was, it was simply returned to its old place, there in the garage, back with other junk. It also went back to its old purpose—as a rest for the custodian Mang Igna’s feet.
It was Mang Igna’s sole pleasure to lean back on his chair and rest his feet like a king on the scrapbook. But of course, he’d only do it after he was done with everything he had to do each day.
The scrapbook was comfortable a footrest. Whenever the old man’s soles itched, he’d simply rub them on its rough cover. It was as if he had found his own foot scratcher. His bunions would also often want to feel the smooth and soft pages of the book. And once the paper grew warm from all the rubbing of his feet, his toes would turn the book to another page.
Mang Igna wondered one thing about the scrapbook: its owner. On its first page, a child’s handwriting could be read: Anacleto Simeon Seguno, Second Grade. But Mang Igna didn’t know how to read. He even had to call a student to read it for him. It was then that the students of the Academy learned that Mang Igna couldn’t read. And so it became yet another of his flaws. The dark hunchback turned out to be illiterate too! Surely, he also didn’t know how to write and count. And if he happened to be able to count, there’s no way he could count up to a hundred.
But when he finally learned the name of the scrapbook’s owner, the old man often thought about him. Who was this Anacleto? Probably an old student of the Academy. But he’d been working at the Academy for so long, and he’d never met a single Anacleto. Maybe he studied there for a very brief time. But how come he only wrote his name and grade on the scrapbook? Why didn’t he write anything else on it? Maybe he got shy or was somehow embarrased? But what stopped him? Or who? But this Anacleto, he must be rich, no? Mang Igna knew that only the children of the rich could ever have a book as big and thick as this.
As he thought more and more about Anacleto, the more the unknown child became fully formed in his head. Until he grew a face, and then a body of his own. Until he could talk to the old man at night, when there’s no one else in the school. Thanks to the scrapbook, Mang Igna now had someone to talk to.
When Mrs. Sinistra ordered Mang Igna to bring the scrapbook to her class, he grew restless. Anacleto threw a fit every night, just as a rich kid would. Meanwhile, the old man felt a pang of regret. Because aside from being his footrest, the book also served as the pillow under his head. Out of all the old books hoarded in the garage, it was the thickest, and so the perfect one to be his pillow. And for each night he laid with it, the scrapbook gave him long sleep and sweet dreams.
But that was before, when the scrapbook used to be a peaceful companion. Aside from its owner’s name and grade level, it had nothing else written on it. It was quiet as it was empty. But when Mrs. Sinistra returned the scrapbook, the old man saw how it has been mistreated. How the teacher let anyone write anything on it, draw whatever on it. But what could he do? He was just a custodian. He could only erase graffiti on walls. Graffiti was the kind of writing he grew up with, not just the ones on walls, but even on supposedly decent signboards and books. It began, Mang Igna could recall, the first time he tried to learn how to read. The a-e-i-o-u that the teacher dictacted so clearly became e-o-a-u-i for him. Sometimes, the letters would group themselves accordingly, like little soldiers lining up. All the e’s would form a column of their own, and so did the other letters. And how could he learn to read if the e’s wouldn’t go with other letters, only with their fellow e’s, just like the other letters did?
The first time he tried to read the word daga, only the letter d remained on the page, while the rest ran off like rats upon seeing a cat.
Even his own name confused him. He often asked himself if he was called Mang Igna because he was a Rafael Ignacio or an Ignacio Rafael.
So his teacher decided that he’d never learn how to read. His teacher couldn’t understand his case. And as expected, he didn’t learn to read any better. Because his book had already been torn up by his frustrated teacher. So his parents decided that he should just stop going to school altogether. That he should just help them with farming instead. There in the fields, where there’d be no letters to confuse his head.
But what was he doing then in the school? Did he just come there for a job? Maybe he still hoped that for the last time, he could still learn. And at his age…
“Can you read this for me, my friend?” he asked Anacleto, whom he could make out in the last rays of the sun. He saw the child slowly came in through the door.
The young boy was surprised. But he obliged and asked for the book. When Mang Igna handed it to him, the old man heard some giggling by the window. When he turned to look, he saw a few boys watching, as if mocking him. He recognized their faces. They were all Mrs. Sinistra’s students. He grabbed the child before him by the collar. He snatched the book from his hands. The boy quick ran outside, laughing.
Mang Igna followed to face the children. “You’ll never get this book!” he shouted at them. They all ran away. One day, they’d return, Mang Igna knew. They’d never stop pestering him. He also knew that there could only be one owner of the scrapbook. Either Anacleto or Mrs. Sinistra’s students. But never him.
So the next day, the old man did what he thought he would never do. He sold the scrapbook to the collector of bottles and newspapers, who would sell it on to a junkshop.
The story of the scrapbook would have ended there, but on his way to the junkshop, the collector chanced upon a group of vegetable vendors. They had just harvested squash and would be sending them all the way to Manila the following day, and so they needed something to wrap the vegetables with. And so, the vendors bought the scrapbook from the collector, who sold it per kilo.
The five men placed their baskets of squash right there and then, by the side of the road. They all sat down on the grass. One of them took out the squash from the baskets. Another tore out pages from the book. Two of them wrapped the vegetables in paper, while the last one put the covered squash back into the baskets. They all chattered as they worked. They believed that the noisier they were, the quicker their hands worked.
The one who tore out the pages couldn’t help but read, even in bits, what he was holding. The others realized that their work was slowing down because they kept running out of paper. But instead of elbowing their companion, asking him to hurry, they joined him in reading, grabbing a piece of paper for themselves.
Their hands continued to work. But their eyes were nailed on the ground, where they placed their pieces of paper. Aside from their eyes, they also read with their mouths, whispering each word out loud. It was how they all learned to read as a child, and no one taught them otherwise.
They passed around each piece of paper before wrapping it on a squash, then put the covered vegetable back into a basket. They even took out the ones they previously finished, just so they could read the pages they missed. This was how their work turned out that day, not minding their squash being exposed to sunlight for a long while.
It was already late in the afternoon when they finished working. The scrapbook was already empty when they stopped. Not a single piece of paper went to waste. The remaining hard cover, one of them used to shield himself from the sun.
When the man who tore the pages went home, he found his five-year-old eldest child. And just like any other day, he found him staring at a wall.
“Papa!” He was suddenly excited when he saw his father. “Earlier I was chased by a tugi-tugi,” he happily reported.
The father didn’t furrow his brows. For the first time, in his head, he understood what the child said.
Translator’s Note:
Just as its first line describes the students as “seem[ingly] harmless and ordinary,” Allan Derain’s short story hides a dark discourse about power underneath its veneer of lightness and comedy. The specific site of the struggle—namely, a scrapbook-turned-dictionary—is a crucial object, as it harkens back to the long colonial history of the Philippines. Dictionaries served as an important tool for the Spanish friars in the 16th century to convert the natives to Catholicism. When the Americans came in the early 20th century, they also became a symbol for being civilized, with the new colonizers establishing a public education with American English as its most sinister core, a system that persists to this day. And so, in the story, when the children begin to create a dictionary in their own terms, there certainly lies the temptation to take this as an allegory regarding Philippine vernaculars revolting against structures of power established during the long history of colonialisms in the country. But, at the same time, considering with how it concludes, the story also appears to propose a different critique altogether regarding literacy, and perhaps literature itself, one that refuses such simple binaries.
As a translator, as much as my practice of rendering works in the vernacular to English permits the rest of the world in to my particular world that is the Philippines, I also believe in the responsibility of the readers to meet us halfway. And so, in translating Derain’s story, I decided to leave most of the new words the students brought to class untranslated, just as how they were in the original, without any hint on their definitions. After all, how easy it is to go type them on Google, and the rabbit hole that the readers are likely to find themselves in, just like the buzzing bees Mrs. Sinistra hears in her head, is just another part of the story.
Allan N. Derain is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Aswanglaut (ADMU Press, 2021), The Next Great Tagalog Novel at Iba pang Kuwento (UP Press, 2019), and Ang Banal na Aklat ng mga Kumag (Anvil, 2014). His latest novel Pamimintana sa Pintong Rosas Budget Hotel is forthcoming from Vibal Foundation, and his first book of critical essays Ang Landas Palabas ng Nobela is forthcoming from ADMU Press. He currently teaches creative writing, art appreciation, and Filipino literature at the Departments of Filipino and Fine Arts at the Ateneo de Manila University.
Christian Jil R. Benitez is a Filipino poet, scholar, and translator currently pursuing his PhD in comparative literature at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. He also teaches at the Department of Filipino at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. His first book, Isang Dalumat ng Panahon (ADMU Press, 2022), received the Philippine National Book Award for literary criticism and cultural studies. His English translation of Jaya Jacobo’s Arasahas: Poems from the Tropics was recently published by PAWA Press and Paloma Press. Read more of his works at christianbenitez.carrd.co.
The shore of the day by then on the edge of the finger shifted the boat surging rips open the other side of the lake the reflections are not some reflections some bent phosphorescent things under the water like the head of the sleeper sunken and bare follows the light of his distorted visions, speaking
The dinghy fades in the erased night coastal sands arise again to the bed—here he sleeps a ground without his feet without an eye to see there—no need, deafness. some trees on the shore flick off brawny crabs, microbic wolves while their hands lace with the branches of the sleeper
Their elasticated needles pass through the buttocks’ skin and ravage his back the ploughing ripples through the sleeper’s mid five or six serpents undulate below the ribs where quiver dorsal fins muscles float in the wind and throughout the leap sails the trembling of the tractor in the spine of the sleeper
—will he know in the end what got going across his back? —who knows to where these gums in this agitated bay plunge or dwindle? —against what defends him?
Alone the sleeper enters into it to his loss because there they come, the hands which pluck out and the sleeper plucked, they are going to draw him near before bursting with laughter scattering their teeth anatomic rosary become again vertebrae—having him finished to fling the skeleton on a bank which is not the shore but the antechamber of someone amidst-adjoint-bays where reigns neither sun nor moon nor link between them nor reception—boudoir of the shadows exists not in the house from where the moment is ever once again he hopes to unescape himself come back to the dinghy but to be patient there away once more hoping to extend his hand to the day.
MARCHE DANS UN MONSTRE MARCH INTO A MONSTER
Man-a-bark abandon the toys of your progress in the silt of the lake the track rises plunges without being heard the bell sounds from the struts of the ship! Man-a-bark, of the sea embrace the snake and give your hand to the monster.
Follow him like your shadow among deserted streets scrubbed by gusts cut from seawater the tolling wind purged from the air wears you away offshore cries a madman in the negative the hooks whistle! Leap into the monster’s skin! Nor the words that your diving suit holding this bird breath silenced.
Long ago the stars bedded the sea in the salt of your blood the future of their pollen well at the rate of your monster you won’t have time to put on your space suit.
Now march into your monster march! Rove in your seven-league boots! Your soles circling around yourself yourself lost on an island a siren in your head onwards your monster! walk with it! Without showing it is invisible like me.
Translator’s Note:
I came across Franck Gourdien’s book Qui Vive in a wonderful bookshop in Marseille, called L’Histoire de l’œil, which has a packed contemporary poetry section.
The two translated poems, “Who goes there” and “Step into a monster” demonstrate the stretching surreality of his poetry. The first, “Qui Vive” in the orginal, is both a map and body, taking in an unconscious, interior landscape. This corporeal space grows and mutates; simultaneously it tries to identify itself and plot a trajectory. This is suggested in the first line, “The shore of the day by then on the edge of the finger/ shifted/ the boat surging rips open the other side of the lake.” We move into increasing uncanny territory whilst remaining the conscious observer.
“Step into a monster / Marche dans un monster” is an invocation to action that at the same time dissolves the rational will. Evolving from “Who goes there,” the poem is a complete dissolution to our origins, “Long ago the stars/ bedded the sea /in the salt of your blood.” I enjoyed trying to translate the phrase “Homme-barque” and wanted to keep the suggestion of the command, “embarque.” In the end, I stayed quite close to the original with “Man-a-barque” and hopefully have kept the orality and peremptory tone with the added ‘a.’
Franck Gourdien’s poems lead us through the unconscious, warping perception with a musicality that echoes interiorly. With elements of Rimbaud, his poems connect surreal mental states with a lyricism that goes beyond natural and unnatural, achieving a kind of feral quality. Implicitly, there is an ecological dimension. He presents a psyche living and suffering in a distorted nature of its own making. The two poems translated come from Qui Vive (2017), published by La Barque. It is his first collection of poetry and another is due to be published this year. Photo by Courtois Stéphane.
Tom Tulloh is a translator from nearly all the cardinal points of London, but now lives in Marseille. Recent work includes three translated poems in Noria revue and a short story by Jean-Luc Raharimanana in Your Impossible Voice.
The Taste of White Chocolate With Flecks of Freeze-Dried Strawberries
About loss, relief, days filled with mysteries and the taste of black sesame. I mark sashiko in watercolour, whichever way the stitch goes. Against the pale cotton background. In the recesses of summer nights. I live in the distance, I live with my defeat, quietly, limiting sugar, white flour, all kinds of fools.
And you?
You talk about daphnia, threads rippling just above the water, the penetrating green which begets mould, a raid coming from the ocean, waning ground picked up by waves, stones appearing out of nowhere. Wild beaches with no path, no seam.
We go through cycles, we pass each other in collections, between letters. And you say you dreamed it all, the west coast the taste of smoked fish, the oyster festival hidden behind paper masks.
Speculations
for my son
I’m on a bus to pick up my son, in the past I had no son, no whaling dreams no evening dress. I didn’t need any memories to write until things turned black or faded in the sun.
I didn’t have to disguise myself to be open about gender and submarines. About nuclear explosions at the bottom of the ocean. Summer is turning pale. In the folds of books sand is crunching, ginkgo leaves are going dry. A living fossil
shimmers between the tree branches pierced by an arrow. As well as the smell of hot springs, I do not recognise muffled voices. I get out soundlessly, I curse the day.
Maybe I’ll try to make some Irish stew. Butter the pretzels, top up the water in the coffeemaker. In the evening we drink wine, someone says they know me well. Read between the lines. Rack their brains, tell jokes try gestures, retrieve, do some tricks.
Translator’s Note:
I’ve been following Margo Południak’s creative journey for a long while now. She is a very talented poet, but also a visual artist, photographer, graphic designer, and book designer. Simply speaking, whatever she touches, she turns into gold.
We met online, through a mutual Facebook friend, and remained in contact for years, but last year marked a rather special moment when we finally met in person. It was one of those meetings when you feel like everything immediately clicks into place, as if you’ve known the person forever.
Reading Margo’s poetry gives me a similar feeling: of quiet recognition, of looking in the mirror, of the “a-ha!” moment. Translating her poems only amplifies this feeling further. What I also love about the process is the fact that Margo, who has lived in Ireland for a good few years now, speaks very good English herself, so while discussing translation solutions and ideas, we can go quite deep into the conversation. In the end it’s always about weighing the options, carefully choosing the right term or phrase, looking at the syntax and deciding whether it hits the mark or not. If the translator and the author can discuss it on equal terms, it makes the whole translation process pure magic. Translating Margo’s poems was that for me.
Małgorzata (Margo) Południak is a poet, graphic designer, book designer, photographer, and artist. Since 2012, she has lived in Ireland, but she writes in Polish. She was nominated for several poetry prizes in Poland, and is widely published in literary magazines. So far, she has published six poetry collections, the most recent one being Pierwszy milion nocy (The First Million Night, FONT, 2024). She has also taken part in numerous exhibitions of photography, graphics, and typography.
Anna Blasiak is a poet, translator, and managing editor of the European Literature Network (ELN). She has translated over 50 books from English into Polish, and some fiction and poetry from Polish into English. She has published two bilingual poetry and photography books (with Lisa Kalloo), most recently Deliverance / Rozpętanie, as well as the book-length interview Lili.Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation in Anna Blasiak. She regularly reviews books in translation for the ELN, where she also runs a monthly poetry column “Poetry Travels,” and a blog devoted to Polish literature, “The Polka.” She is one of the editors of Babiniec Literacki. annablasiak.com. Photo by Lisa Kalloo.
After Composition in Yellow, Black and White (1949)
Without warning dodging winter’s seeking something to place against some sherbet sharp as an anguish, though I still relate deflating in its own syrup. Here, portal radiating like struck gold, merry girders, plastered in bashful your geometry, cuniform, silver presses flat against the ceiling. and candy cigarette. Ominous underside you reach. Restraint can sharpen glee; against wineglass’ singing rim. The high enough to feel my hair’s tall attention. choke, making me have a throat, so quicksilver whippet, lapidary browbone, coast, how could they not be. I plumper jelly in the mounting heat, slithering down the seasons. Breakpoint, you circumference me and mark my against the door, black lozenge of never as high as I’d hoped: not lifeguard, lofty as a heron, I covet foot hair slathered in warm gelatine, duck- like the aftermath of rain, definite as a treble clef. Life is a bad place to leave so I’ll be a good boy and stay becoming. touch would be a cheap facsimile for the Butterscotch me in symmetry; teach me palate, heel. Show me how hunger tastes know lilac. Pin me down on voyeur’s where my thighs braid with pretty’s memory— everything in me unruled, currents breaking all over.
blanketing temperaments— tongue, electrified violet, fluorescence— becoming, everything gone isosceles, most to the nectarine looking at summer’s door, a am fenced in by joy’s smiles. I am sundrunk on balloon who strange gravity Bitter little liquorice allsort of cloud below eyelid where the high pitch of your finger pitch of your finger close The lines of you making me much coarser than theirs, petalled with girls on the specimen, cheeks rendered
knifepoint, height quiddity, long as a arch and beak, slick
your guarantees, Your lines so irrepressible pleasure only eyes can take. how colour feels against lash, to shadow. How my knuckles vinyl seat, dammed
Dylan McNulty-Holmes is a writer and editor who lives in Berlin. He is the author of the chapbook Survivalism for Hedonists (Querencia Press, 2023), and the longform digital poem Half a Million Mothers, which was shortlisted for the 2022 New Media Writing Prize. His writing has been made into a T-shirt, commissioned by a trade union and read at worker protests in Jakarta, and translated into five languages. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he’s been featured in journals including Split Lip, DIAGRAM, Puerto del Sol, Magma, and The New Welsh Review. Find him at dylanmcnultyholmes.com.
Gullets blowing out prayers to grow gills Paddling limbs have become wet wings too weak for ascension
Shore is beneath the flood And the people have to drown to get to land
Faith, diluted, snorkeled in soggy tongues Hyponatremia bodies and submarined homes
Breathless trees; soaked vegetables Flushed zoo; marinated apes in the cold arms of water
In the center of the city, a mosque holds its crescent above the flood Begging God for liberation
From this damning cleanse Lord, if this be another Genesis
From whose tongue will the prophecy drift? The city is gorged and heavy with its tears
The people are filtering into the fringes in fishboats. Awaiting the sun
To burn out the flood and warm their homes And they’ll flock back with thirsty feet and hungry lungs
to tell the tale— How they have become Almijiris in their own city
This poem, a miserable riddle. Tell me, How a city of water can be deserted? Tell me, how a flood can be burned?
Agboola Tariq A., Swan II, is a poet & he studies Law at the University of Ibadan. His writing explores self / identity and space. His works are featured or forthcoming at Lucent Dreaming, ANMLY, Aké Review, SoFloPoJo, Variety Pack, Fiery Scribe Review, Olumo Review, Overtly Lit, & elsewhere. He won the Blessing Kolajo Poetry Prize ‘24, 1st runner-up Fireflies Prize ‘24, and a SprinNG 2024 Fellow. He is on X @Agboola_Tariq_A.
Tear after tear, wound after wound. My life leaks away like water from a tap. It’ll end with the drop of the last day. It’ll come back with the pure power of the rain. Dolphin. Tap
One day we met and later we sought one another out on other days. And we’d found–by the screams louder than everybody else’s. Then there was a walk and I left my footprints on the snow, on the cobbles, on the poles, on the streetlights, and you and your sisters watched. There were three of you and together we were Chekhov and his play. Then we parted our ways to meet again, but this time with consciousness. And to count time– tear after tear, wound after wound,
minute after minute. We were getting closer. We met to banish undead from the streets and then walked the same streets down. We stayed all alone. With no prying eyes got married and multiple obstacles seemed to us just a “cost-of-production.” And we sat down in our tiny room that was a bedroom and a kitchen to us. But once you now notice how so long my life leaks away like water from a tap
and for us it gets too cramped. We read to each other in hopes to lose ourselves; you talked about politics and I did on Marx and we tried to find the common ground. We got our kids; I started to cover you from the cold with my coat less and less. Then you remembered your diploma from the US and decided to come back there, settle in Palo Alto. I don’t cause a trouble and stay alone with the kids. You know that even if this dream doesn’t come true it’ll end with the drop of the last day,
not sooner or later. From California we communicate over the Internet and to you the howls of snow and wind are something unheard of–it all reminds a quiet air alert. Finally, you come back disappointed and together we belatedly raise our kids hoping to outrace the time. We teach our kids the words but not their meanings so that afterwards they would not judge us for our past transgressions but for future ones. And once they’re grown we file for divorce and bet on our life, on the fact that it’ll come back with the pure power of the rain.
Sometime in 2021 Berlin
Anton Lushankin is a (visual) poet, writer, playwright, and translator, born in Kyiv and, since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, resides in his hometown. His work appeared in multiple publications including TAB Journal, orangepeel, Cream City Review, Lenticular Lit, and Teiresian. He has too many ideas to really be able to manage them properly, but currently he’s finishing M.Sc. in Architecture, while working on a closet musical DIG!!! LAZARUS DIG!!! (based on the eponymous album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), a memoir-in-essays about the Russo-Ukrainian War, and a multitude of short stories. He’s on Instagram.
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some sherbet
