POSTS

Lyrics to a Forgotten Tune

by Wang Guowei

Does something real lie in the words　
　　　　　　　　　　to these new songs of yours?
To maiden heads such fancy phrases　
　　　　　　　　　　sound laughably soft-core*
“Lamplight o’er a broken heart…”　 
　　　　　　　　　　now, who’d you write that for?
Behind my desk I peer around 　
　　　　　　　　　　at recent works of mine
Then dim the lights and reckon out　
　　　　　　　　　　the joys of bygone times
All trivial passions of the heart　 
　　　　　　　　　　where not one line aligns

* In Chinese, this line reads like a pun about puns. The term 綺語 means either “ornate writing, fancy phrasing” or more euphemistically “smutty language, erotica.” The term 胡盧 means “loud laughter” or “calabash, bottle gourd” (in this latter sense also written 葫蘆.) Calabash may be used to allude to the closed world of women, to various hidden forbidden delights, or to the vagina and the delights sequestered therein. It could be read to mean “ornate writing like this is just hilarious” or else connotatively as something like “this kind of innuendo belongs between the sheets.” To top it off 綺語 is also a homophone for 岐語 “double entendre”

浣溪沙

本事新詞定有無， 
這般綺語太胡盧。
燈前腸斷為誰書？
隱几窺君新製作，
背燈數妾舊歡愉。 
區區情事總難符。

Yearning in Two Places at Once

(Lyrics to the tune of “A Cut of Plum”)
by Li Qingzhao

Now fragrance of red lotus fades,
  　 the mat feels autumn-blown. 
I loosen my gauze robe for bed,　
the boat I float in on my own*. 
Who’s sent a lover’s brocade letter 
　   this way across the clouds?
Skywriting geese** return as moonlight　
fills the chill tower of one alone***

Flowers fall and scatter on their own
　as waters run and drain.
A singular longing links us in　
two places with one pointless pain.
This feeling clings and I can’t find it
　 in me to put it out.
It only falls out of the face　
to surface in the heart again.

*- The original literally says “I board my magnolia boat alone”. A boat of magnolia wood was a traditional image for any fine vessel, especially a poet’s, and was by extension used to refer to a bed. 
**- The migratory wild goose is a traditional symbol of mutual yearning, a legendary bearer of lovers’ messages. The original says literally “character geese”. The shape of a flock of geese was often likened to a character 一 “one” or, if in a v-shape, 人 “person”.
***- A woman waiting for her absent beloved atop a watchtower, scanning the countryside for any sign of his return was a stock image. The original says “moonlight fills the Western Tower”. The “Western Tower” in this genre is by convention a woman’s dwelling or chamber.

一剪梅

紅藕香殘玉簟秋。
輕解羅裳，
獨上蘭舟。
雲中誰寄錦書來？
雁字回時，
月滿西樓。

花自飄零水自流。
一種相思，
兩處閒愁。
此情無計可消除， 
才下眉頭，
卻上心頭。

Song of the Caged Goshawk

by Liu Zongyuan

High as the chill winds hiss and shrill, in flight with the hard frost,
The skyward-striking scouring Goshawk swerves in dawn-lit day, 
Mighty mist-splinterer, cloud-cleaver, rainbow-render, darting 
Down thunder-sudden to skim hillocks like a ricochet.

In a hard swoosh his strapping quills cut through the thorn and bramble,
He falls to snatch a fox or hare then soars again in gray.
With fur-caked claws and blood-drunk beak, the frightener of fowl,
He stands alone to scan the world and lords above his prey.

But summer-molten months and blistering winds come of a sudden.
His molted feathers fall. Heart hewn, he broods and lies at bay.
Grass-rover rats and racoon-dogs become his persecution.
Ten times a night he stares about in shellshock and dismay,

Left with one wish: for pinion-swelling Fall to blast him free
To scale the clouds uncaged again, and wind his natural way.

籠鷹詞　

淒風淅瀝飛嚴霜　
蒼鷹上擊翻曙光　
雲披霧裂虹蜺斷　
霹靂掣電捎平岡　
砉然勁翮翦荊棘　
下攫狐兔騰蒼茫　
爪毛吻血百鳥逝　
獨立四顧時激昂　
炎風溽暑忽然至　
羽翼脫落自摧藏　
草中狸鼠足為患　
一夕十顧驚且傷　
但願清商複為假　
拔去萬累雲間翔

Moon Over Frontier Mountains

by Bao Junhui

Risen high, the moon of fall
Glows north on a Liaoyang barricade.
The border is far. The moon gleams farther.
Ice-bows flash as winds invade.
Soldiers gaze back: home beats at the heart
And war-steeds balk at the beat of a drum.
The north wind grieves in the frontier grass
And barbarous sands hide hordes to come. 
Frost freezes the sword blade into its sheath.
Wind wears the banners to bits on the plain.
Oh someday, someday, to bow near the palace
And never hear camp-gongs clang again. 

關山月　　

高高秋月明，　
北照遼陽城。　
塞迥光初滿，
風多暈更生。　
徵人望鄉思，　
戰馬聞鼙驚。　
朔風悲邊草，　
胡沙暗虜營。　
霜凝匣中劍，　
風憊原上旌。　
早晚謁金闕，　
不聞刁斗聲。

Waiting On Him (To the tune of “Bowing to the Moon”)

Anonymous

Off to another land my wayward man has gone　
 　But now New Year has well-nigh come 
And he has not made it home　
 　I hate his love that runs like water　
So reckless and so ready to roam　
He couldn’t care less for home　
　Beneath the flowers I turn and pray
 　To the powers of heaven and earth and say 
　　To this very day
He has left me in this empty room alone　
I see above me the blues of heaven’s dome
　I am sure the moon and stars and sun 　
Must know the pain I’ve seen　
　I lean beside the window screen　
　And let the tears come streaming down
　　On my gold-beaded silken gown
And cry away at unlucky fate　
 　And how messed up my karma has become 
Still I pray I see his face　
 　And I swear I’ll give him hell when he gets home

拜新月

蕩子他州去　　
已經新歲未還歸
堪恨情如水　　
到處輙狂迷　　
不思家國　　　
花下遙指祝神明
直至于今　　　
拋妾獨守空閨　

上有宆蒼在　　
三光也合遙知　
倚帡幃坐　　　
淚流點滴　　　
金縷羅衣　　　
—自嗟薄命　　
緣業至于思　　
乞求待見面　　
誓辜伊　

Translator’s Note: 

The poems translated here are rendered with consideration to form and rhyme, in response to what is now the dominant mode of translating classical Chinese verse into English. The audio recording contains the first three poems here, read in Chinese and then in English. The latter two are read in an approximate reconstruction of how (certain) Chinese speakers (might have) pronounced the text at a time of early reception. Thus, while I read Wang Guowei’s poem with modern Mandarin pronunciation, I read Li Qingzhao’s and Liu Zongyuan’s poems in hypothetical reconstructions of certain late 12th and early 9th century dialects, respectively. 

Wang Guowei’s poem was written in the early 20th century. To my mind, the poet realizes, as he writes in the classical style, that what he’s saying doesn’t match what he’s thinking. Traditional poetry once had a vital social function, served as a means of refined expression, and was normatively presumed to be non-fictional. Now it corresponds to no reality whatsoever. It’s become a heap of clichés that don’t align with the world he knows, an arabesque of refined word games.

Liu’s poem (commonly read as allegory for his exile in a tradition where autobiographical reference is often simply assumed) is distinctive for use of sound. If I had to pick a single Tang poem where knowledge of medieval Chinese pronunciation could enrich one’s reading, it would be this one. Here, Liu packs in checked-tone syllables ending in the stop consonants /k/, /t/ and /p/ (which do not survive in Mandarin but do in some other forms of Chinese, such as Cantonese). They make up 27% of the syllables in this text, a far greater proportion than would be expected to occur by chance. Every line has at least one, and they are concentrated overwhelmingly in the first sections of lines. In my reading, it emphasizes the bird’s speed and ferocity in hunting, and the cramped and thrashing discomfort of confinement. I have taken the liberty of packing the English translation with some rather audible sound play.

“Bowing to the Moon,” is a popular song from the mid-Tang dynasty from a collection recovered in a scroll-cave at Dunhuang. Unlike much verse in this genre in the early period, this lyric may have actually been composed by a woman, rather than by a man in a woman’s voice.

Wang Guowei (1877-1927) was a Chinese poet and historian. Born in Haining, he worked in Shanghai as a newspaper proofreader after failing the imperial examination. He studied Japanese and eventually studied natural sciences in Tokyo for a year, followed by a study of German idealism. He left for Japan again during the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, and returned to China 5 years later remaining a loyalist of the overthrown Qing emperor. He was appointed professor at Tsinghua university in 1924 and committed suicide by drowning in 1927 in Kunming Lake before the NRA entered Beijing.

Li Qingzhao (1084-1151) is traditionally held to be China’s greatest woman poet. She led a colorful life as a scholar of history, a literary critic, an art collector specializing in bronze inscriptions, a painter, calligrapher, and poet. She is considered the finest writer of cí poetry, lyric verse set to tunes of the Song Dynasty.

Liu Zongyuan (773 – 819), born in present-day Shanxi, was a philosopher, poet, and politician of the Tang dynasty. Along with Han Yu, he was a founder of the 古文運動 “Classical Prose Movement.” In 805 after falling out of favor with the government, he found himself exiled first to Yongzhou and then to Liuzhou. During his exile he composed a considerable volume of verse and prose.

Bao Junhui (fl. 790s) was a poet of late eighth century China who achieved fame during the reign of Emperor Dezong during the Tang. Little is known of her. Widowed young with no brothers, she was invited by Dezong to the palace alongside other talented women of letters.

A. Z. Foreman is a translator, poet, and language-acquisition addict working on a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. His translations from Arabic, Chinese, Latin, Occitan, Ukrainian, Russian, Irish, and Yiddish have appeared in publications like Metamorphoses, Brazen Head, Asymptote, and the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. He’s voiced John Wycliff in a documentary by Catherine Warr and Wang Wei in a video-essay by Jacob Geller in historical accents. He also writes his own poetry when he must. Importantly, if you have a dog he’d love to pet it. Find him on YouTube here.

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 BACK TO FOLIO

On the Train

The court doctor ruled, it is uncomfortable to carry your miniature soldier, so the man we saw in the train should be prosecuted. You are welcome to spend the night in my nest, says the rat. The green wind does not recognize the three corpses it brushes. The night does not know the green dress it ruffles. Who has left that military pistol in the tree, decorated by foliage? These, too, are clues: fur, more weapons rest in the yellow coffin, three more lie in the hunger. Who belongs to the grey, gloved hand the prosecutor found on the seat? The eager men want to dress the moon in asphalt. It doesn’t matter if the baby is upside down. They babble incessantly at it. Their white fingers wake the piano and lie to its teeth. The man we are after has spent twenty years on the train. How many millions of times the compartment door has opened and closed since he began, and he still does not recognize anyone. Each time he reaches the border, police ask, why do you sit at the snakeline to your homeland? The man does not answer, just turns from translucent to green. He’s just had a vision of his neighbor in his coffin.

Im Zug

Der Gerichtsarzt entschied, dass es unangenehm ist, Ihren Miniatursoldaten zu tragen, daher sollte der Mann, den wir im Zug gesehen haben, strafrechtlich verfolgt werden. Du kannst gerne in meinem Nest übernachten, sagt die Ratte. Der grüne Wind erkennt die drei Leichen, die er bürstet, nicht. Die Nacht kennt das grüne Kleid nicht, das sie zerzaust. Wer hat diese mit Laub geschmückte Militärpistole im Baum gelassen? Auch dies sind Hinweise: Weitere Waffen ruhen im gelben Sarg, drei weitere liegen im Hunger. Wer gehört zu der grauen, behandschuhten Hand, die der Staatsanwalt auf dem Sitz gefunden hat? Die eifrigen Männer wollen den Mond mit Asphalt bekleiden. Es spielt keine Rolle, ob das Baby auf dem Kopf steht. Sie plappern ununterbrochen mit ihm. Ihre weißen Finger wecken das Klavier und liegen an den Zähnen. Der Mann, nach dem wir suchen, hat zwanzig Jahre im Zug verbracht. Wie oft hat sich die Abteiltür seit Beginn geöffnet und geschlossen, und er erkennt immer noch niemanden. Jedes Mal, wenn er die Grenze erreicht, fragt die Polizei, warum Sie an der Schlangenlinie in Ihre Heimat sitzen. Der Mann antwortet nicht, sondern wechselt nur von durchscheinend zu grün. Er hatte gerade eine Vision von seinem Nachbarn in seinem Sarg.

The Danger of Flowers

He serves the pigeon, expanding his great grey beard to please her. His star signs deliver the convoluted news: your dead father sits at the street corner in this moment, open to questions if you can find his face. Numbers make dazed revolutions around his head. He wants to talk about the construction of his obscured mouth and replay the funeral march with more portable materials than glass coffin, green cells, but the danger of flowers heightens the summer. Crooked steps fall into a meadow where daily Mass is sung for the exiled seagulls to white violins, red voices. And then comes the law, intimidated by the inflamed flowers, and declares red faces, like the deads’ silken tongues, to be illegal. Normally someone else makes the sacrifice: the lamb, the sepal throat. Today the wind sleeps white.

Die Gefahr von Blumen

Er dient der Taube und erweitert seinen großen grauen Bart, um ihr zu gefallen. Seine Sternzeichen liefern die verschlungene Nachricht: Dein toter Vater sitzt in diesem Moment an der Straßenecke und ist offen für Fragen, ob Du sein Gesicht finden kannst. Zahlen machen benommene Umdrehungen um seinen Kopf. Er möchte über die Konstruktion seines verdeckten Mundes sprechen und den Trauermarsch mit tragbareren Materialien als Glassarg und grünen Zellen wiederholen, aber die Gefahr von Blumen erhöht den Sommer. Krumme Stufen fallen auf eine Wiese, auf der täglich die Messe für die vertriebenen Möwen zu weißen Geigen und roten Stimmen gesungen wird. Und dann kommt das Gesetz, eingeschüchtert von den entzündeten Blumen, und erklärt rote Gesichter wie die seidenen Zungen der Toten für illegal. Normalerweise bringt jemand anderes das Opfer: das Lamm, der Kelchhals. Heute schläft der Wind weiß.

Annunciation

The old clock worries its hands over black numbers. The girl is missing. The moon is bright as linen. Its strands illuminate an unprotected heart. Guilty or not guilty, absolution lies in the blue cloak of the nun sitting hours-long under the linden, drinking the purple juice like the poppy, her rosary wrapped around stars at their birth. Thus half-strangled, the stars bless us with their burnt red breath. In the green pond, dark fish dip into darker night. From the rocks, this night’s annunciation rings false. Ribbons fall from the girl’s head. Her captor whistles behind a rock. The girl weeps over green holy sayings in silence, her mouth bright red, her eyes still unbroken. She clings to a magnolia blossom. Her captor winds a string of bread around her neck. The birds will arrive by morning.

Verkündigung

Die alte Uhr macht sich Sorgen um schwarze Zahlen. Das Mädchen wird vermisst. Der Mond ist hell wie Leinen. Seine Stränge beleuchten ein ungeschütztes Herz. Schuldig oder nicht schuldig, die Absolution liegt im blauen Umhang der Nonne, die stundenlang unter der Linde sitzt und den lila Saft wie Mohn trinkt. Ihr Rosenkranz ist bei der Geburt der Sterne gewickelt. So halb erdrosselt segnen uns die Sterne mit ihrem verbrannten roten Atem. Im grünen Teich tauchen dunkle Fische in eine dunklere Nacht ein. Von den Felsen aus klingt die Verkündigung dieser Nacht falsch. Bänder fallen vom Kopf des Mädchens. Ihr Entführer pfeift hinter einem Felsen. Das Mädchen weint schweigend über grüne heilige Sprüche, den Mund hellrot und die Augen immer noch ungebrochen. Sie klammert sich an eine Magnolienblüte. Ihr Entführer wickelt sich eine Brotschnur um den Hals. Die Vögel werden am Morgen ankommen.

A Silken Net

No one had any time for martyrs. An arctic symphony, by ice. I thought my murderer would be more discerning. Like pain in a foreign language, prayer in a foreign landscape. Heaven just draws a cloud across the scene so He does not have to see His creation. A rape. Am I low on folic acid? The old remedy for thieves was vinegar. It is as though God whispered to Himself, what is the most fertile pain? Then tossed a bell to the arching waves. Retaliated upon my soul by prolonging it as a candle wick. I did not let Him touch me in turn. Together we build an arch of sound overhead, two chords around our necks. The song loves us. 

The shadows of the terminally ill are drifting along the ward. One day it will be possible to transcribe their memories. The doctor needs the patients to feed his poems. If a dream is a wish the heart makes, do we desire silver men with green daggers at our backs? Throw on the unexpected garment, a timely emaciation. The echoes from His passion drip off pillars, turned to holy yellow sweat. The light greens and the devil grins. Store your kisses for winter. Malodorous short slips of the aged. 

I dream of a word I can carry in my palm like a spider: ornate with hair and honest in intention. Someone changed my sleep. I am now sleeping without meaning, without words left in the morning. Between the rain and the forgotten, I stand emptied. Fallen from our hands, finally, is grace. The long dead smell of dampened fire lingers. We stand up to our knees soaking wet, stars in our net, lice more alive on our scalps.

Ein Seidennetz

Niemand hatte Zeit für Märtyrer. Eine arktische Symphonie aus Eis. Ich dachte, mein Mörder wäre anspruchsvoller. Wie Schmerz in einer Fremdsprache, Gebet in einer fremden Landschaft. Der Himmel zieht nur eine Wolke über die Szene, damit er seine Schöpfung nicht sehen muss. Eine Vergewaltigung. Habe ich wenig Folsäure? Das alte Mittel gegen Diebe war Essig. Es ist, als hätte Gott sich selbst geflüstert, was ist der fruchtbarste Schmerz? Dann warf er eine Glocke zu den gewölbten Wellen. Vergeltete sich an meiner Seele, indem sie sie als Kerzendocht verlängerte. Ich ließ mich nicht seinerseits berühren. Zusammen bauen wir einen Klangbogen über uns, zwei Akkorde um den Hals. Das Lied liebt uns.

Die Schatten der todkranken Menschen treiben über die Station. Eines Tages wird es möglich sein, ihre Erinnerungen zu transkribieren. Der Arzt braucht die Patienten, um seine Gedichte zu füttern. Wenn ein Traum ein Wunsch des Herzens ist, wünschen wir uns dann silberne Männer mit grünen Dolchen im Rücken? Ziehen Sie das unerwartete Kleidungsstück an, eine rechtzeitige Abmagerung. Die Echos seiner Leidenschaft tropfen von den Säulen und verwandelten sich in heiligen gelben Schweiß. Das helle Grün und der Teufel grinsen. Bewahren Sie Ihre Küsse für den Winter auf. Geruchliche kurze Ausrutscher der Alten.

Ich träume von einem Wort, das ich wie eine Spinne in meiner Handfläche tragen kann: mit Haaren verziert und ehrlich in der Absicht. Jemand hat meinen Schlaf verändert. Ich schlafe jetzt ohne Bedeutung, ohne Worte am Morgen. Zwischen dem Regen und dem Vergessenen stehe ich leer. Aus unseren Händen gefallen ist schließlich die Gnade. Der lange tote Geruch von gedämpftem Feuer hält an. Wir stehen klitschnass auf den Knien, Sterne in unserem Netz, Läuse auf unserer Kopfhaut lebendiger.

Translator’s Note:

This selection of poetry comes from Ein Seidennetz, which Georg and I have agreed to call A Silken Net of Stars and Lice in the collection’s English-language incarnation. The poems are informed by (neuro)divergent experiences and the strangeness of language as invocation. We both like the idea of words that originally create, that we might for a moment—through all these shards of language we swish broken over bloodied tongues—incant the thing named! We incant in the ways we can that nevertheless resemble joiks for the wind, hymns for the desert from the mystic walled in as anchoress—for we write about our homes, such bodies as stars and lice, from the outside peering longingly back in. At the same time, we write and translate from the four doorless stone walls of the anchorage cell, reaching out toward the night and the stones that do not hold human shapes. We want to elucidate the beauty in stars and lice, “the danger of flowers,” the strange “silken tongues of the dead,” the exiled birds, without fear of the contradictions and paradoxes that inform our lives. Instead we seek to live in them: for example, Georg implies in the poems presented here that we can only lie with words, such as those that God used for the first time to create—yet far from comprehensible to human logic, our creation through words feels “[l]ike pain in a foreign language, prayer in a foreign landscape.” A word “more honest in intention” would be “a word I can carry in my palm like a spider: ornate with hair…” and feeling, a word more spider-like and less human-made. For logical human words, like God-words, transform the in-between moments in which meaning is creative into recognizable shapes that are meaningless, or at least mean less. Thus it is that Georg and I have an ardent and doomed goal: to invoke in color and movement, to re-animate in these collaborations ways of feeling across decades and feeding the lice with emotions that seep from our scalps across continents.

Georg Amsel comes from Salzburg and conceives poetic ideas in an Austrian German from the late 1800s. His poems appear recently in Lotus-eater Magazine, Cagibi, Portland Review, and Passages North, among others, and his work “Komfort” translated by Lake Angela as “Comfort” is listed in the Best Literary Translations 2025 anthology from Deep Vellum. His poetry seeks to disrupt the contemporary uses of language as much as its translations do. Self portrait by the author.

Lake Angela holds a PhD in the intersemiotic translation of poetry and dance from the
University of Texas at Dallas and has her MFA in poetry. Her books include Organblooms and Words for the Dead (FutureCycle Press) and Scivias Choreomaniae (Spuyten Duyvil). Recent publications appear in The Common, Another Chicago Magazine, BODY, New York Quarterly, and River Heron Review, among others. Her work advocates for schizophrenia spectrum creativity, and she welcomes visitors to lakeangeladance.com. Image by Jésica Cichero.

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CONCERNING SPECIES

the neon body fluid from the pines sticks to our paws
it crackles when we shave their bark
like we shave our scalps

surrounded by trunks rubbed bare by wild boars
we wander in the rank scent of the fawns
sharp signs of incorporation entice
until we are drenched in our own sweat
and dizziness

we emerge from the tangled woods pungent
barefoot and sink into the agitated meadow
as it feeds and teams
where mammals rhythmically move their mouths
and patiently gaze at us with intimate eyes

MID-JUNE LIGHT

I breathe in the twirling praise of songbirds
so they have not yet died
plump speech bubbles linger in the air
ongoing inception  evolutionary spurts  decay

ants pull more than their own ancient dead weight towards my feet
spiders weave filigree threads from their glands
pinecones crack and burst open
in the heat
we have seen everything, understood nothing
and released the seeds

ground wasps emerge from their burrows right
next to my human face as it rests there in the sand
to peek out and crawl back
growth and food
mandibles and this entire
indeterminately ailing gaze

EXTRALINGUAL

I swing oldly
in the hammock anchored to the trees in the forest
as if in a baby’s cradle
in which I never lie
at night
pine trees with their flaky bark
speak to me
truthfully
as their sap flows
their resinous body odor embalms
everything through the black branches
crescent moonlight flows across me
year after year
from the drifting-away moon

SMOLDER

must I then say farewell world from your sweet
salty waters and green hills
I have seen you from above like a
space traveler
you are so tender and full of grace

every slice of decomposing street pizza still hurts my soul
we are being duped
and discounted, my heart
in dieback

our scars like to break open and bleed
we extract the last of our strength like fossil water

the sleepers never manage to rest
the light- and soundscapes swell
the devices are always transmitting

we must bow down

Translator’s Note:

These four poems come from German poet Kerstin Becker’s latest poetry collection Das gesamte hungrige Dunkel ringsum (The Entire Hungry Darkness Enveloping, 2022), which received critical acclaim and was selected as a Poetry Recommendation of the year by the German Academy for Language and Literature. Becker’s poetry stretches the German language as if it were a viscous membrane layered across the world, combined with an immediacy that recalls the sticky sweat of countryside summers, the disquieting un-darkness of summer nights, or the peaceful (Hegelian) recognition between species.

Her frequent rejection of orthographic and syntactic convention makes her poems thrilling to read and challenging but rewarding to translate. My approach to trans-creating them in English involves two stages. The first is to dissect the poems and parse them out. Some poems will not include any punctuation or capitalization—grammatical features that in German go a long way in clarifying the structure of a poem—thus rendering the poem simultaneously more open and more closed. The second stage—once I’ve deconstructed the poem and done my best to understand how all the pieces (words) fit together—is to focus primarily on the image and/or sense that I interpret an individual word, line, or poem to be offering in German, and then rendering that in English. Yet, occasionally, I render a turn of phrase more obliquely rather than “fluidly” so as to maintain a sense of the German.

Becker was born in the former East Germany, where she still lives. Among other jobs, she has worked as a cemetery caretaker and gardener, occupations which lie closely to the mood and world of her poems. There is an almost grimy freshness to her words, one that conjures vivid activity in the imagination. In a way I find hard to describe, Becker’s poetry sends me back to a childhood that typical representations of childhood don’t. Perhaps it’s because her poetry digs into the dirt of the earth and of life, and that reminds me of the farm I grew up on. Perhaps it’s because they reject cozy nostalgia, which I do too. Perhaps it’s because some of her poems remind me of how it felt to spend an entire August dog day exploring the woods after doing chores, and of the layers of dried sweat, mud and dirt only partially washed off by a swim in the creek. Perhaps it’s because Becker’s poems, insofar as they can be taken as emerging from her life, remind me of a previous stage of mine, one that I now look back on with fonder eyes than I used to. But her poems don’t rely on recycled pastoral romanticism. No, they get up close, to the damp earth, to the swarm of wildlife and wild life. To the teeming warmth of it all.

Kerstin Becker (b. 1969 in Frankenberg, East Germany) lives and writes in Dresden, having also worked as a typesetter, a bartender, a cemetery gardener, a teacher, and a translator. She is an editorial member of the journal Ostragehege and the author of three collections of poetry: Fasernackte Verse (Fiber-Bare Verses, 2012), Biestmilch (Beast Milk, 2016) and Das gesamte hungrige Dunkel ringsum (The Entire Hungry Darkness Enveloping, 2022). Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Czech, Hungarian, Macedonian, and Serbian. Becker has been awarded many prizes and grants for her writing.

Bradley Harmon (b. 1994 in Minnesota, USA) is a writer, translator, and scholar of German and Nordic literature. Currently a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University, he has been an American-Scandinavian Foundation fellow to Sweden, a Fulbright fellow to Germany, and an Emerging Translator mentee with the American Literary Translator’s Association. Forthcoming book translations include poetry by Johannes Anyuru and Katarina Frostenson and prose by Monika Fagerholm and Birgitta Trotzig. He currently lives in Berlin.

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from The Past is a Lonesome Town

WHAT SCHOOL DID YOU ATTEND FOR SIXTH GRADE?

in sixth grade there was an epidemic of HEPETITIS A
so bad they scrubbed the trays
those of the brigade

I was one of the few not infected

the SICK
returned to school
on restriction, but
they ran and rode bikes
through the empty streets
screwing up their LIVERS

ms. dinorah announced
IN THIS TOWN
IN A FEW YEARS
YOU’RE GOING TO SEE
THE RESULTS
OF THIS INFECTED BLOOD

I thought all my friends would die
by fifteen

and they did die in some way

I may be one of them

WHAT WAS THE LAST NAME OF YOUR THIRD GRADE TEACHER?

at noon they were bringing lunch
some old aluminum CANS
left in the main hall; we pulled them in
with a rebar bent into a CROWBAR

the nurses visited us for TWO REASONS
to vaccinate or put in our mouths
a harsh liquid
infamous as THE LITTLE SIP

one afternoon the lunch truck
apparently was going to explode
they sent us away from school
neither THE LITTLE SIP nor THE VACCINES could save us

crowded together against the wall we pioneers were crying
but nothing exploded; instead
we discovered that at THIS HOUR the sun was softening the asphalt
spilled without gravel

we left CRATERS
in our eagerness to get globules of oil
THE STAINS stayed on our fingers for a week; we had survived

WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE PLACE YOUR WEDDING RECEPTION WAS HELD?

the lights of the college dorm room
went out at one
in the lower BUNK of aluminum pipes
the blond and I banged carefully
without shaking the one above
who was, besides,
 a Jehovah’s Witness
and had once seen objects
MOVE as if by themselves

YOU CAN CALL ME
NYMPHOMANIAC, YOU CAN CALL ME
WHAT YOU LIKE
she claimed those first months
BUT YOU HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF ME
what it meant
in the language of the blond
we had to screw
every night

the bunk across the room
could see our SHADOWS
a year later on a merciless night
we separated
like objects that drift apart
according to the scriptures

WHO WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD HERO?

during a BLACKOUT
the family fell in a sinkhole
earth swallowed them
forms on the sidewalk saluted them as they passed
we wondered later
who it could have been
a neighbor shouted in the distance
I’M GOING TO SHOVE MY LEGS
IN THE OVEN
TO HAVE SOMETHING TO COOK WITH

FIRE BEETLE: phosphorescent points
flying in parallel curves

AIRPLANE: red lights overhead
blinking in a straight line

ON WHICH WRIST DO YOU WEAR YOUR WATCH?

they tried to steal it from me
two NIGHTS

the first I woke from a dream
pulling so strong
on THAT ARM that when fleeing
the sleepwalker dragged my bed with him

the second, also asleep
another hand leaped through the little window of the bus
his fingers dipping under THE WRISTBAND
I towed him a few meters

I was not the one with the untouchable properties
the watch was heir to something that granted
 the left hand an instinct for conservation
stronger than its resistance to water

it has already stopped telling time
at the bottom of THIS SUITCASE

WHAT WAS YOUR HAIR COLOR AS A CHILD?

at midnight
they put A BULLET in the leg
of the old woman who demanded to participate
in the celebration of the Revolution

it was not a bullet
shot from a pistol
around the bonfire lit by rays of matches
the missile lodged
heads were set on fire
we had to run
I never knew where the ORDNANCE was coming from

I had escaped this bullet
at seven on the slope
of the backyard of a house; in the ritual
they said when BURNING it left
a silhouette of a turtle
we hit our heads as in Russian roulette
until one of us decided to start the RACE

we poured into the street, running away
without knowing from what

and this, I remember, was
weeks before the host would show us
that by means of an EXTREME CRUNCH
it was possible to blow yourself

Translator’s Note:

The poems from The Past is a Lonesome Town (El pasado es un pueblo solitario; Bokeh, 2015) are, on the one hand, a lyric sequence shaped by coming of age in a small-town Cuban childhood during the late stages of Fidel Castro’s regime, and on the other, a testament of exile, memory traces in the wake of forsaking a complicated homeland. The “prompts,” in English, are security questions—required of immigrants hoping to establish accounts and services—which the newly-arrived Morales only half-understood and, given Morales’ characteristic irony, questions which have trenchant implications for the poet’s new “American” identity. Morales, who graduated with an architecture degree in Cuba, moved in 2009 to the Dominican Republic for two years and then emigrated to study at New York University, where he received an MFA and a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature.

A special challenge in “carrying over” into English Morales’ often oblique, associative leaps is rendering the intelligently bewildered and flustered tone of the motivated immigrant faced with obstacles to his future and yet filled with indelible memories of the past—literally living “between,” just as a translator experiences the contrary pulls of two language traditions and, like the speakers in Morales’ poems, labors between those forces.  Frost famously declared poetry is what’s lost in translation, but my experience is that poetry is also what is found there, a linguistic tightrope act that demands the same concentration and balance; practicing, we often fall off. One reason is that, in my view—by no means shared by all readers and writers—a translator is not just the transmitter of a poem into what is somewhat clumsily called the “target” language, but also the creator of an original text. Or to put it another way, as Tolstoy translator Richard Pevear says, “translation is not a transfer of meaning from one language to another, but a dialogue between two languages.” Octavio Paz goes further at the start of his essay on translation: When we learn to speak, we are learning to translate. By extension, then, literature—the most creative use of language–is always a process of translation, turning the content of the imagination into literary art, even when poets and readers speak the same tongue. Many translators have noted that their struggles to re-create a writer’s words in those of a different language in fact continue the original struggle of the writer to render nonverbal realities into words. But not all translators are lucky enough to work with the author, and certainly none can have learned as much and worked as pleasurably as I have with Osdany Morales. More than a dozen other of my translations of his work from El Pasado es un Pueblo Solitario have already appeared in the journals Interim, The Bangalore Review, Asymptote, and forthcoming in the Denver Quarterly. As for other questions that arise from literary translation—a vast subject—I like to think I’m not being defensive when I quote Gregory Rabassa, asked by an interviewer if he knew enough Spanish to translate Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. “The real question,” Rabassa corrected the interviewer, “is whether I know enough English.”

Osdany Morales was born in Nueva Paz, Cuba, in 1981. He is the author of two collections of short stories, Minuciosas puertas estrechas (Narrow Little Doors; Ediciones UNIÓN, 2007), and  Antes de los aviones (Before the Flights; Suburbano Ediciones, 2013); two novels, Papyrus (The Last Librarian; Dalkey Archive, 2012) and Zozobra (Landfall; Bokeh, 2018); a poetry collection, El pasado es un pueblo solitario (The Past is a Lonesome Town; Bokeh, 2015); and a book of essays on Cuban literature, Lengua Materna (Mother Tongue; Bokeh, 2023). Morales has received the 2006 David Award, a 2008 Casa de Teatro prize, and the 2012 Alejo Carpentier Award.

Harry Bauld’s poetry collections are The Uncorrected Eye and How to Paint a Dead Man. He was included by Matthew Dickman in Best New Poets 2012 (UVa Press). His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the U.S. and U.K. and won the New Millenium Writings award and the Milton Kessler Poetry Prize.  He divides his time between New York and the Spanish Basque Country.

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KONZUMING

Approaching the supermarket she heard a strange sound.

Something like the rippling and grating of a gigantic metal surface. A powerful southerly had been blowing since the night before. The parking lot was sweltering and deserted, strange even for mid-August. The intense heat and high-pressure air had seared the asphalt, and pockets of the surrounding vegetation had turned a burnt, black-brown color. It was Sunday afternoon and the color of the sky was changing to gray. The neighborhood was encircled by a wall of leaden-blue clouds from the west. Droves of shopping carts formed a large metallic snake at the fore of the parking lot, where a lone old man was sitting on the patio of the attached outdoor café. He looked like a wax figure of Pope Ratzinger with sunglasses. He was completely still. The wind made an eerie sound as it hit the metal blocks. Raising her head in search of its source, she saw the enormous first letter of the word KONZUM tottering precariously above her. She was startled out of her hypnotic gaze when two arms encircled her waist tightly from behind. Out of nowhere a large plush mask appeared right in front of her face. It looked like an elephant and a mutated insect put together. The mask was followed by two young women. They were giggling and taking pictures of her with their cell phones while the monstrosity rubbed up against her with its giant plush antennae. I’m a sqeeter, uttered a voice behind the mask. ZZZZZZZZ. I’m an old geezer. He refused to let her go. The two girls, in a fit of hysterical laughter, shoved two promotional samples of Autan insect repellant into her hands. The geezer-sqeeter kept pricking her torso with its thick stuffed snout, which hung from its head like an elongated nose. She felt totally disoriented in the midst of the ambush. The man lasciviously poked her with his snout, while the girls riled him on, ooo you reeeally stung her now, you really stuuung her, and doubled over with laughter. She hastily tore herself out of that sudden promotional assault, threw the samples of Autan on the ground, and rushed toward the store, its open doors welcoming her like a life raft. The monstrosities remained on the other side of the door. Through the glass, she watched their grimaces and convulsions like scenes from a silent horror film.

The supermarket was empty and cold as a grave. The usual advertising jingles—“Because you deserve it” and other tame melodies—were inaudible, as was the beeping of barcode scanners. At the entrance stood a cardboard cutout of a smiling Konzum mannequin with slightly larger-than-human dimensions. Below the cardboard man were the words: Konzum—with you through life, and next to him, a semi-faded sign that read: Konzum—the Croatian word for supermarket. The only other living thing in the entire store was a single cashier—a woman on the stockier side, with wavy blond hair, and barely taller than the cash register in front of her. She was holding a small bar of chocolate and preparing to take a bite.

She didn’t notice anyone else entering the store. She directed her gaze toward the ceiling, where the aisle markers were hanging on chains and lightly swaying. Meat, Dairy, Cleaning Supplies, Bakery, Beverages. She picked up a smaller red basket; she didn’t intend to buy much, just a few essentials to hold her over until the next day. Yogurt, milk, some pastries. She looked around, hoping to see other shoppers. The floor was dirty, covered with litter and footprints—like they hadn’t cleaned it for days. The shelves didn’t sport their usual abundance. Many products were on sale because of their imminent expiration date. There were no fresh fruits or vegetables, aside from blackened bananas and one soft and wrinkled cucumber. The Agrokor retail conglomerate was struggling to stay afloat, even though this was the only grocery store in the neighborhood. With all its former splendor, Konzum was going the way of the long-vanquished Diona, Slavija, and Union stores. Their shelves had gaped empty as though ahead of an impending cataclysm, before the stores closed for good. Here, too, only books remained plentiful on the rotating displays in front of the checkout lanes. They gleamed in their glossy plastic wrappers, some with a promotional gift—sunscreen lotion or a packet of instant coffee.

As she walked along the rows of empty shelves, she felt uneasy. She hoped at least one other person might be here, not counting the cashier and herself. Every now and then she’d glance between the aisles toward the cash registers. The cashier had hardly moved and was so motionless that she looked from a distance like a St. Nikola chocolate figurine in its red-and-green wrapper. In fact, the cashier seemed to be chomping down on just the one. An entire candy aisle was filled with those chocolates, left over from the holiday season—various Santa Clauses and Easter Bunnies trademarked by Milka and Lindt, reindeer, eggs, and chicks. She was heading in the direction of the bakery when she heard a sudden noise. A man in a red Konzum uniform with a cart full of beverages passed in front of her. He was starkly thin and bony, barely a pale shadow of the cardboard mannequin. He anxiously heaved the beverages like an ant with an oversized load and nearly knocked her down with the overburdened cart. At the last moment, she stepped back, in the direction of a fridge filled with cured meats. She paused in front of the fridge. It too had surprisingly little to offer. Just a few factory-sealed packages of prosciutto, mortadella, and ham. Overcast with shades of gray and brown, the squashed pieces of meat had not a hint of the appetizing bright pink color shown on their packaging. Most were plastered with yellow labels that said CLEARANCE in red letters. She stared at the meat as if they were clues to a mystery. She paused. She stroked the packages of squashed meat.

She was startled out of her thoughts by a trembling voice whispering to her: – I see you like munching meaty treats? – It was the old man she had seen in the café outside the store. How had she failed to see him enter the store and approach her? He had on an unbuttoned shirt and tinted glasses. She didn’t want to stare, but she thought his fly was open. She remained frozen in place. And then he asked her: – And do you like granddaddies?

Feeling as if she’d just been slapped in the face, she headed in the direction of the dairy aisle. The old man moved slowly and feebly. She shoved a fruit yogurt into the basket and took a carton of unrefrigerated Tetra-Pak milk from the stack. She only needed to grab some bread and then she’d get out of this rotten place. The silence in the store was abruptly interrupted by a turbo-folk song, which sounded like it was being played on someone’s phone. She soon heard humming, too. A young man she recognized from around the neighborhood had entered the store. He looked about eighteen and spent most of his time out on the street. He often turned people’s heads by belting some song on one of the benches in the park or shouting at passersby. She suddenly heard the music stop. The young man cursed his phone and the battery. She’d almost reached the bakery department. The young man, who wasn’t in her line of sight, periodically shouted something. Screw this or that thing, motherfucking noodles, coffee, frying pans, and on and on, with every item that was out of stock. He mentioned the head of Konzum last: fucking Todorić, screw that thieving fucker. From his voice, she could tell how far away he was. Then he began to hum what she presumed was another turbo-folk melody. At first so quietly that she couldn’t make out the words, then more and more loudly. His voice echoed throughout the store. Kon-zu-ming, Shit-ting, Ex-pi-ring, we’re livestock ready for a-slaughtering! She stood in the bakery department while the voice of the young man drew closer and closer to her. Kon-zu-ming, Shit-ting, Ex-pi-ring. In the bakery, there wasn’t a living soul. There were no fresh pastries, no bread. Only a few vacuum-sealed American toasted loaves with long shelf lives. Kon-zu-ming, Shit-ting, Ex-pi-ring. She waited at the counter, hoping someone would appear. The young man was getting closer and closer—he’d spotted her now and was heading straight towards her. Kon-zu-ming, Shit-ting, Ex-pi-ring. She stood motionless at the counter. The young man stopped humming and walked right up to her. She could feel his breath. He smelled like cigarettes and neglect. She turned and looked into his eyes. The whites were streaked with tiny red lightning bolts. His face looked strangely bloated. They stood there, side by side, in tense silence. All of a sudden, an eruption of noise—of glass bottles, at the other end of the store. She shuddered. She broke into a run in the direction of the checkout. The aisle markers above her began to sway. At the checkout, the cashier was gone. She heard only a voice that asked her if she had a Multiplus discount card. She looked around in wonder for the source of that faint female voice. It seemed to be coming from a pile of chocolate crumbs on a red-and-green wrapper lying on the counter.

Translator’s Note:

Dear Pests and Other Creepy Stories (Poštovani kukci i druge jezive priče), published by Profil Knjiga in 2019, is a short story collection by acclaimed Croatian writer Maša Kolanović. The twelve stories dramatize the creeping spread of capitalism in contemporary Eastern Europe. Woven together through the metaphor of cockroaches and other “pests”, the stories expose the absurd and sinister facets of otherwise familiar situations—like going to IKEA, signing up for a phone plan, or vacationing on the beach. The stories move from the aggressively gentrified Adriatic coast (hyped as the setting for Game of Thrones) to Zagreb’s socialist-era high-rises (home to many of Kolanović’s characters) and its metropolitan outskirts (where refugees are detained from entering “Europe proper”).

Alongside “Unending” (story #7) (which appeared in Asymptote) and “Dolls from Chernobyl” (story #8) (which appeared in Two Lines Journal, in Vlad Beronja’s translation), the story published here—“Konzuming” (story #10)—offers a nightmarish sketch of the mega-chain grocery store Konzum, where a young woman confronts an onslaught of sexualized brand advertisements and factory-sealed packages of processed foods. Since late-capitalist forms of empire weaponize bad poetry, the story’s violence unfolds to the accompaniment of cutesy jingles and catchy slogans. This soundtrack not only poses a significant translational challenge—in late-capitalist terms, an exponential one!—but also reveals the story’s global reach in an era of privatization and hyper-concentrated wealth.

“Konzuming” explicitly names Ivica Todorić, the once-CEO of Agrokor, which he would later transform into the joint stock company Konzum. Serving as a leading player in 1990s privatization processes, Todorić came to monopolize the retail industry, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the region. As its acquisitions billowed beyond manageability and private pockets were more readily lined than store shelves, the company was forfeited to the Croatian government. While federal authorities charged Todorić with embezzlement, those charges were later dropped. Kolanović’s story bravely bears witness to this recent history.

Maša Kolanović is an award-winning author best known for her genre-bending works of fiction and poetry. Her books include the poetry collection Pijavice za usamljene (Leeches for the Lonely, 2001), the novel Sloboština Barbie (Underground Barbie, 2008), the prose poem Jamerika (2013), and the short story collection Poštovani kukci i druge jezive priče (Dear Pests and Other Creepy Stories, 2019). The latter received the 2020 EU Prize for Literature, the Pula Book Fair Audience Award, and the Vladimir Nazor Prize for Literature. She is an associate professor in the Department of Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb.

Ena Selimović is a Yugoslav-American writer and co-founder of Turkoslavia, a translation collective and journal. Her work has appeared in Words Without Borders, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Dial, and World Literature Today, among others, and has received support from the American Literary Translators Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from Washington University in St. Louis.

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