Dreams about studying cuneiform. Dreams about using the wrong side of the knife to scrape bread. Dreams about loss. Dreams about bodies that are not sexual, but feel sexual. Dreams about a road that goes nowhere. Dreams about meeting the president and asking him, do you know how many people you’ve killed? Dreams in which my friends are deported. Dreams about doctoring. Dreams about chemistry. Dreams about the moon. Dreams about my father as a doctor, a chemist, an astronaut, a president, a poet, a man who hates poetry. Dreams about waking up from a dream only to realize the dream continues. Dreams in which the colors run together. Dreams about trees. Dreams about telling my dreams to Freud, and he says all dreams about the moon are about my father. Dreams about loving someone I don’t recognize. Dreams about failing to recognize someone I love. Dreams in which my friends are teargassed on the streets of L.A. Dreams about meeting Annes: Carson, Boyer, Lamott, Frank. Dreams about crying in airports. Dreams about saying goodbye. Dreams about windchimes. Dreams in which one of the Annes invites me to a funeral. Dreams in which I’ve never been to a funeral. Dreams in which my friends are taken away and interrogated. Freud says all dreams about state violence are about my father. Dreams in which one of the Annes says, I’ll come back tomorrow when you’re feeling more yourself. Dreams about being myself. Dreams about being someone else: my neighbor from childhood, my most beloved friend, one of the Annes, a grey cat, a father. Freud says all dreams about my father are about love. Dreams in which the Annes tell me the pain of unrequited love, which every lover has experienced, and we gather in a circle and hold hands, we weep, we comfort each other, I ask them does life get better after a loss and they tell me they can’t tell me, no one knows, one of them says what kind of loss and I say I can’t put it into words because the loss is still growing, the worst of the loss is as yet only imagined but I dream about it every night, in smoke and the sound of bullets, in Salvadoran prisons, in American concentration camps, in the eyes of my friends, my beloved. Dreams about going to funerals. Dreams about a poem.
Desiree Remick holds a BFA in creative writing from Southern Oregon University. She is also the fiction editor of Nude Bruce Review. Before going to college, she taught fencing, picked cones for the forest service, and worked with a partner to translate poetry from Japanese to English. Her writing has won awards, most recently Bacopa Literary Review’s Free Verse Poetry Award, and has appeared in Thirteen Bridges, The Avenue, Westchester Review, and other places. Find her on Instagram @remick_writes.
I’m the silent breathing one, the mischief of my melody is this Drunk from the well-spring of awareness, my color is this
For a lifetime I’ve been a captive to humility’s bent form Until my wings and feathers turn to music, my harp is this
Restless with life’s turbulence, what can I do? I’m the balance of breath’s fancies; my rock is this
My yawn decorates the cup of existence Don’t break my intoxication like the dawn, my color is this
The wave of the wine, the pearl’s luster—what fancies are these? I’m the glory of this palpitating world and my honor is this
I’ve no taste for art nor do I possess any genius I’m your Majnun and my knowledge and culture is this
I’ve enriched whoever I’ve wandered with The creed and quality of my struggle is this
Friends, it’s a crime to leave behind a weary heart If the foot forms a blister, my faltering is this
Being Bedil, one without a heart, I’m not allowed to see the beloved’s beauty I possess no mirror, what can I do, my rust1 is this
1 Before glass-backed mirrors, polished bronze, copper, or silver plates were used, which easily oxidized or tarnished, leaving the surface spotted or “rusted”. In Persian–Sufi poetry, the clear mirror symbolizes the purified heart reflecting divine beauty, while rust marks signified corruption or obstruction of vision.
Ghazal 2155
Drunk since pre-eternity I worship the wine of origin Like the grape I bear glints of glass in my side
If they proffer me to the wind I’ll dance on happily I’m made from humility’s clay my disposition doesn’t falter
We’re in need of the sun tell the shadows to vanish If me-ness disappears nothing remains in my heart but you
My lofty meaning requires an acute understanding Traveling through my thoughts isn’t easy I’m a mountain and I have hills
Descend from thoughts of me become Him, let you-ness flower Reflect a moment the point I’ve made is apt
Truth’s not outside of you wine doesn’t ferment outside its casket Pretention’s way isn’t lost it’s my expression that falters
My heart is ridden with holes from your arrows Delirious with desire I’m the beehive filled with honey
Even a rock would weep for the state I’m in I’m alive without you I’m dead without dying
Abandon all worries and cares break off from all desires Enjoy wine and life’s pleasures I do this too
My powerful verse, Bedil gives rise to waves of meaning If I start a couplet it becomes a ghazal
Translator’s Note:
Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil (1642–1720), often referred to simply as Bedil, remains one of the most challenging poets in the Persian canon to render into English. His dense language, syntactic complexity, highly imaginative metaphors, and self-invented compound expressions create a texture that is both dazzling and disorienting. To approach Bedil is to enter a hall of mirrors, where paradox and riddle are not ornamental devices but the very fabric of meaning-making. His verse has confounded Persian readers and enthusiasts for centuries, precisely because it demands both intellectual rigor and knowledge of his deep metaphysical beliefs, such as humility before the divine, sincerity of purpose, and the pursuit of perfection through self-knowledge and purification. However, once one begins to decipher his riddle-like verse, the reward is immense: a glimpse of a poet-philosopher grappling with and expressing the most fundamental questions of existence in the most beautiful lyrical voice.
Bedil’s poetry constantly interrogates the precarious and fleeting nature of life, the fragility of the human condition, and the turmoil of a self grappling with perpetual longing. In preparing these translations, I have chosen ghazals that represent Bedil’s signature concerns and stylistic daring — pieces that stand at the intersection of Sufi metaphysics and literary innovation. They highlight his propensity to philosophize while also demonstrating his immense imaginative reach, his ability to stretch the Persian language into new and unexpected shapes. My aim has been to preserve the integrity of the couplet structure and the intricacies of Bedil’s thought, while acknowledging that no English rendering can fully reproduce the rhyme and music of the original. To try to maintain the lyrical quality, I have employed poetic devices such as alliteration, internal rhyme, and rhythmical phrasing, so that the English version may carry at least an echo of the original’s prosody.
As part of a larger project to bring Bedil’s ghazals into English in a sustained and coherent body of work, these translations also serve as a meditation on the act of translation itself. What does it mean to translate a poet whose very method is to trouble meaning, to insist on bewilderment (ḥayrat) as a mode of truth? My approach has been guided by a willingness to remain faithful to that bewilderment — to allow the strangeness and difficulty of Bedil’s verse to persist in English, while also making it accessible to contemporary readers. In this way, the translations aim not to resolve Bedil’s riddles but to invite readers into them, to experience the paradoxical beauty of a poet who, though underrepresented in world literature, deserves to stand alongside the greats of the Persian tradition.
Mirza Abdul Qadir Baidel, also known as Bedil Dehlavi, was born in 1642 in Patna, India, and is considered one of the greatest Indo-Persian poets. Bedil was a leading exponent of the Sabk-e-Hindi (Indian style) of Persian poetry, characterized by intricate metaphors, philosophical depth, and linguistic innovation. His poetic oeuvre encompasses various forms, including ghazals, qasidas, rubaiyat, and masnavis. His famous works include Char Ansur, Tilismi Hairat, Turi Marifat, Muhite Azam, and Ruqa’at. While well-regarded in Tajikistan, Pakistan, and India, he is especially revered in Afghanistan, where a genre is dedicated to studying his unique poetics, called Bedilshenasi (Bedil studies).
Homa Mojadidi is an Afghan American poet and translator. Her translation work has been published in Asymptote, Washington Square Review, and longlisted for Deep Vellum’s Best Literary Translations, 2025. Her poems have appeared in One Art, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Blue Mountain Review, Gulf Stream Review, Mudlark, and Calyx (forthcoming). In her own poetry, Homa explores the themes of loss, exile, memory, and mysticism. Homa has an MA in English Literature from the University of North Florida and an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry from George Mason University.
Selections from මාවතේ ත්රීවිල් ජීවිතේ (Life on Three Wheels)
MAY 24
A piss-drunk gentleman got into the ata1 with bread, fish and a bag of candy.
I asked, “Where to, sir?”
“To crown myself king! Y’all are Indian bootlickers oi. Y’all suck us dry and make the Bajaj company rich… Don’t be angry, malli. I’m a little drunk. I can’t look at my little ones and woman without drinking arrack. Must be because I love them too much.”
What an odd boozer. His long beard was graying, just like his long-shot dreams.
After paying me, he tipped me a candy.
1 Ata is a name used for the three-wheeler by some of its drivers. It’s a possible variation of the word auto (shortened form of autorickshaw in Indian English). Elsewhere in the book, the author states “ata” originates from a name used for chickpeas in India.
JUNE 28
A lane in Hyde Park Corner. Because other vehicles headed that way, I went too. A traffic policeman from Kompagnaweediya police waved me stop. Fair and handsome man like a movie star. Wasted my time for no reason. Made me walk about five miles here and there. After everything, yelled at me for driving up the wrong way.
Then he smirked, “How’s filing this with the court for punishment?”
After about one and a half hours, we settled it without fines or courts.
Tempers go ballistic when you ask a light from a man whose beard is on fire—the gripes of bribes.
Heart, bear with this…
JUNE 05
Hung an artsy mouse behind the windshield of my three-wheeler. It reminds me of Ganesha whenever I see it, because he too rides a mouse. O Ganesha, grant me the wisdom for the journey on the highways.
Those going around in big vehicles call the ata a house mouse. That’s because we somehow squeeze through traffic and take our passengers to their destination on time.
The other thing is the mouse likes human company just as much as the dog, cat, parrot and mynah. Houses without mice are like eateries without dal or police stations without a cop named Bandara.
MAY 28
Wasted the entire morning in the Ragama Hospital parking lot. Caregivers get squashed standing in line for the patients, get yelled at and spend hours in queues. The amount of suffering patients go through is unbelievable.
An aunty who came with a patient was having breakfast next to the ata. I stole a look as she was eating in stealth mode. White bread and sugar. A tea bun and a banana inside the plastic bag in her hand—my guess is she’s saving them for the patient.
Aunty, we gotta deflate inflation, don’t you say?
SEPTEMBER 05
Went to the beach to buy fish with the lawyer’s missus. Fish is a lot less expensive than legal fees.
Sardines for the dog. Pilchards for the cook and guard. Squid for Proctor Sam sir. Prawns and a garfish.
She fancied a paraw head and bought it. Then complained there’s no one to clean it and gave it to me. But she didn’t bargain to lower the fare. What a sweet lady.
May more flowers of fortune blossom for you. May there be more lawsuits for you to feast on fish.
Translators’ Note:
Part-docupoetics, part-vignettes, the prose poems in මාවතේත්රීවිල්ජීවිතේ(Life on Three Wheels) offer an insider’s look into the unexplored subculture of Sri Lankan taxis, known as three-wheelers. The work is full of sociological depth, gained from the poet’s unique vantage point as a three-wheeler driver who converses with passengers and bystanders of all socioeconomic classes. Thematically, the collection deals with poverty, underdevelopment, environmental destruction, policing, race & class tensions, and gender & family dynamics, while making an impassioned plea for stewarding nature and children.
Edirisooriya’s ear is keenly attuned to the sounds and expressions of the Sinhala language: here, these include capturing local rhythms in “deflate inflation” and “gripes of bribes”. Notable, also, is his use of three-wheeler argot, like “ata” (three-wheeler). Based on conversations with the author, the translators have provided an immersive reading experience, attempting to localize the idioms and expressions in English.
First published as a column in the leftist Sri Lankan newspaper Lanka in the early to mid-2010s, the poems were published as a book in 2016. Though disregarded by the Colombo-centric literati, progressive circles and labour unions welcomed it as a relatable work from a marginalized voice. Re-reading this book, one can see Edirisooriya alluding to canaries in the coal mine of the 2021 Sri Lankan economic crisis: crushing inflation, an apathetic state apparatus, and corruption of the guardians of law.
E.M. Palitha Edirisooriya works as a farmer and a three-wheeler driver. He has been a columnist and contributor for several national newspapers. In addition to මාවතේ ත්රීවිල් ජීවිතේ, he has authored a book on gammadu, a traditional ritual of rural Sri Lanka.
Kasun Pathirage is a writer based in Colombo. His literary translations have been published or are forthcoming in cream city review, MAYDAY, Diode, ONE ART, and LIT Magazine. He is currently working on his first book, a collection of Lovecraftian horror with a Sri Lankan twist.
samodH Porawagamage is the author of the poetry collections becoming sam (Burnside Review Press) and All the Salty Sand in Our Mouths (forthcoming from Airlie Press).
At the top of the hill there is a garden [Rās al-Bustān]
It is said (that is to say that there are people who tell other people who tell other people who, etc., across generations) that at the top of the hill there is a garden, that this garden is beautiful (that is to say that the people who tell other people imagine, each of them, deep within themselves, the most beautiful of gardens and according to their ability to conjure up and perceive such images might envisage a specific garden — with particular flowers and trees, pines and chrysanthemums for example and freshly cut grass and vineyards in the distance where one can hear birdsong, and it’s the beginning of autumn — or maybe more of an impression, a burst of green or perhaps, they imagine a melody rather than a garden which carries within it the essence of a garden, the most beautiful garden or perhaps they imagine not so much the garden as the room from which they see the garden framed by the window, or perhaps — and these are my favorites — they imagine clearly, from the word, and the word alone, the ideal garden without seeing anything other than the word and how the word manifests as a garden) and in this beautiful garden, the most beautiful of gardens, they say there is imprisoned a prince (prince of what? not much of anything, he is simply a prince so they may picture him noble, sweet, handsome in this garden; if he was prince of something he would seem anachronistic or despotic or even spoiled but here he is a prince as in certain tales, prince only because he exerts on us a commanding desire to know more) and this prince has been a prisoner to the garden for so long so long that he’s forgotten he’s a prisoner, forgotten his very self so long that he lives in ignorance, subject to the arrangement of the garden and so the centuries pass in this garden, each day fresh and new, where there lives a prince who does not know that he lives in the beautiful garden nor that he lives at all and no one comes (it’s been so long that the prince has forgotten the very idea of no one, or of anyone, or of coming, of the self; he has forgotten the others as he has forgotten himself, he recalls the garden as if it were his only memory, he might die of it were he to leave the garden now).
They no longer know who or what once imprisoned the prince nor by what magic; it has been so long that that evil or jealous power, that sadistic sorcerer or lustful necromant, that corrupt magician or undead wizardess has (perhaps) forgotten that they created a garden and trapped a beautiful prince therein this would be a tragedy, if the prince remembered it, or if the garden was arid, but the garden is beautiful, arcane and lustrous the prince is beautiful, young, and remembers nothing and so goes his life, every day he discovers in the garden — that is to say in himself as well — things which amaze him. Sometimes it’s a ray of sun or a drop of water or a blue rock or maybe a butterfly or a red or green apple or a pear or a peach or his finger or a caterpillar or perhaps a bit of rain, a cloud, his foot, the sky, some mud beneath a stone and a pond or perhaps he finds a bridge there are — it is a garden after all, not a forest or a jungle — follies and pavilions and cottages and colonnades, like the bridge which changes place every day, and also the temple at the back of the garden and dedicated to some forgotten god of whom all that remains is a crumbling statue covered in ivy (one of his ears is that of a stag and the god is young and handsome like the prince, and attentive too) and of whom the prince does not think for he has forgotten all notion of self and of other and of god and of creatures, and for him, all of these marvelous things, the butterfly and the temple and his foot and the apple are all one and the same unified thing which is him which he sees from different angles and so he goes on awestruck each day at being a garden at being himself until the end of time.
The prince likes to climb — if ‘like’ truly applies to this instinctive urge, this compulsive journey through oneself —, he likes to climb to the top of the garden’s hill (which is itself on a hill) where one can see nothing beyond the garden, for the garden stretches garden-like to the edges of time and space but he looks at the far reaches of the garden so great and yet so small like a nest and he looks the way one looks at oneself and sees himself stretched out like this to the edge of the sky and farther still seated upon the hill at the top of the garden.
It is said that one day the spell will be broken and the garden will dissipate and the prince will be free or perhaps the prince will remember a number of things and will find at the back of the garden a gateway, all rusted through which he can push to come into the world or perhaps the sorcerer or sorceress who once imprisoned the prince will awaken or remember quite suddenly shoot I forgot a prince in a garden and will then come to free him sorry kid this all just slipped my mind and then the prince will leave the garden will leave his very self for he will have to acknowledge then that he and the garden are not the same nor the butterflies or the sun or the sky or the apples or the watermelons or the grass or the rain or any of it, each thing is itself and he is a self among the selves and he will come back to the world, this prince.
and he will spend his first night and his first day in the world and he will weep not with sadness for that is one of the things he has forgotten for good, but he will weep with grief, that’s it, with grief, and with the first dawn he will have to see himself as a body separate from the rest and with the second dawn will feel like a body separate from the rest he will for the first time in centuries be truly in pain and with the third dawn he will have to decide if he still wants to live in this world where he is him, alone, and not garden-him and then perhaps he will take his own life (but ‘taking his life’ sounds like taking it into his own hands when instead he will be taken taken by death) for this this option is one we never forget it knows how to wait patiently for the perfect moment to present itself to you hand outstretched: “Come.”
But I hope he will not do this, for I love the prince who lives in a garden at the top of a hill.
Translator’s Note:
I was first introduced to Karim Kattan’s work through his sophomore novel, L’Eden à l’aube, and was blown away by his vivid, beautifully rendered storytelling. I found the same in his recent poetry collection, Hortus Conclusus, whose poems explore the notion of le jardin enclos as a space between, a vital force that blooms in spite of the aridity caused by colonial violence: “The empire and all which resists it. All in the garden.”
Palestine is at the very heart of the poems in this collection, even if not all of them take place there. Kattan writes in the foreword that this particular poem – “At the top of the hill there is a garden [Rās al-Bustān]” – was inspired by a garden in al-Azariyeh, behind the tomb of Lazarus, where he has to go to renew his papers with the Israeli occupation. In Arabic, ‘bustān’ means ‘garden’ or ‘orchard.’ This term, along with the collection’s title, Hortus Conclusus (which invokes both a convent of the same name in Artas and the story that unfolds in the Song of Solomon), conjures images of lush vegetation and divine fruits – imagery which is harshly at odds with the violent apartheid being carried out just next door. The garden in this poem, therefore, exists at “the intersection of brutality and dreams.” It is within this beautiful garden that we watch a beautiful prince live out his days, subject to this space that is in a constant state of flux and change. The garden is an enclosure, but is also a sort of escape. A respite from the horrors of the empire outside, and simultaneously a reflection of the prince himself as well, full of things wondrous and strange.
Karim Kattan is a Palestinian writer from Bethlehem, born in Jerusalem. He holds a doctorate in comparative literature and writes fiction, essays, and poetry in English and French. His novels are published by Éditions Elyzad, based in Tunisia. His debut, Le palais des deux collines (2021), won the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie. His second, L’Éden à l’aube (2024) was shortlisted for the Prix Renaudot. His poetry collection Hortus Conclusus appeared in 2025. His work, widely translated, has been published in journals including The Paris Review, The Dial, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and The Baffler.
Kathryn Raver is a writer and translator currently based in France. Following her studies in French at the University of Iowa and Linguistics at King’s College London, she now works as an Assistant Managing Editor for Asymptote Journal and spends her free time haunting the catacombs and coffee shops of Paris. She is an avid champion of translated literature, and is particularly interested in LGBTQ+ stories and speculative fiction.
Seeing an egret pacing along the shore, I typed: “The egret walks within its own shadow” As I pressed the return key, the egret’s slender neck made a “click” sound I continued writing: “Its feet must step upon a small patch of shadow – in order to move forward” I softly uttered the two syllables, “Bai-Lu” the words slid off the screen – yet the egret remained white and well-rounded “It needs not to see the shadow; the riverbank guides it, as if guiding a wave” It walked away, far beyond my sight, vanishing with its shimmering reflection “If I step outside, the riverbank will guide me too, showing me the wind’s path across the water The egret and I both have dark pupils” In this poem, I’ve completed one part of the egret; The claw-shaped prints beneath its feet remain slightly damp
Morning, day after day the grass I pass holds a momentary green
A loaded bus moves through narrow streets; its point of departure was already in winter
Here, a blackbird dies in the middle of its flight
I live in every moment the flock take off If I reach out, I can catch a feather hanging in the air
Because tomorrow belongs to forgetting, today, I linger long and late in this place
片刻
清晨，日复一日 我经过的草丛有片刻的绿意
满载的客车，驶过狭窄的街道 它的起点已然是冬天
这里，一只黑鸟 在飞行的中途死亡
我活在鸟群起飞的每一刻 伸手就能抓住半空中的羽毛
因为明天属于遗忘 今天，我在此地长久地驻留
Translator’s Note:
Lu was born in 1995 and has been living in a small town in southern China for her entire life. She teaches Chinese at a local middle school. Though she is neither reclusive nor drawn to the Western classical, she often reminds me of Emily Dickinson, or what a Dickinsonian life could be in the modern world – a life of concealment, depth, and clarity of perception – quietly rare, deeply human.
Her language is delicate and restrained, and rich in the sense of “object.” The lines are concise yet directive, often with a precision toward concrete imagery. Her poetry carries a certain “lightness,” say, relaxed, light-handed, and a kind of light suspended in between darkness and brightness. Transitions and movements within her poems typically unfold slowly, almost imperceptibly. She often acts the role of narrator and perceiver, while deliberately diminishing any strong sense of immediate presence. As a result, her work has an anonymous emotional tone.
Both poems here showcase Lu’s poetic style and language characteristics. Thematically, they both revolve around “staying” and “passing,” with birds – the blackbird and the egret – each playing an important role. In A Moment, I focused on preserving the gravity of the instant and its philosophical weight. The original poem moves with a terse, abrupt rhythm, falling without warning – like the blackbird’s sudden death, sharp and unprepared. As a translator, I tried to maintain this tension within restraint, using calm and precise description to approach a deeper sensibility, while keeping the abruptness and suspension of the original, avoiding any over-decoration.
A Poem Typed into My Mac is a poem about poetry itself – a poem about the act of writing. The poet observes the egret while continuously typing, yet the language always trails behind reality. This is a kind of “writing on site,” advancing layer by layer, like a sketch gradually taking shape, forming a rhythm in which writing and observing interweave. The poet’s act of writing is at once an imitation of reality and a separation from it. In the end, the egret walks away, leaving only “claw-shaped prints” that “remain slightly damp,” while the poet completes “one part of the egret.”
The poem is also an immediate reflection on the poet’s observation. In the entanglement of language with time and space, some slides off, while some others remain hidden in shadow – and exist by leaning on that shadow. In translating, I emphasized this interconnectedness between two threads of writing. For example, the sound of “click” can be heard both as from the keyboard and the egret’s neck; I tried to preserve this semantic ambiguity, this interplay of resonance and echo. For the name of the bird, I chose to keep its pinyin form “Bai-Lu,” rather than the English “egret,” although they both happen to have two syllables; so that readers could sense both the phonetic texture and the foreign quality of the original.
This poem, as a self-conscious act of writing, is guided not only by the poet’s will, but also by structure, sound, and image, just as the riverbank guides the egret “like guiding a wave.” In the end, the egret’s movement and the poet’s imagined act of stepping outside mirror each other. Poetry cannot fully possess or represent the egret; what remains is only the trace of its presence within language.
It’s fortunate that I’ve been living in the same place with Lu and get to talk with her a lot about her poems – the external manifestation of her deep perception, awareness of life, and lived experience. As a translator, it’s also delightful that I share a similar tone and style with her in my personal writing, or in this sense, the way we live, the way we contemplate, and the way we observe and sense certain shared objects. While Lu wrote in her poem “I’ve completed one part of the egret”, here I tried, in my translation, to complete another part of it.
Lu Jiateng was born in 1995 in Kunshan, China. She is a poet and teacher. She received the 6th Yangtze River Young Poets of the Year Award. Her poetry has been published in various Chinese journals.
Zhiyuan Mark Ma is a poet and translator in Chinese and English. He is a student at Duke University and Duke Kunshan University, majoring in Creative Writing & Translation. He was previously an editorial assistant at The Shanghai Literary Review. His poems and translations are forthcoming at ANMLY, Poetry South, SAND, and elsewhere. He is recently co-translating and co-editing an anthology of Kunshan contemporary Chinese poetry.
I have a fever. The numbers on the digital thermometer read 39.7 and the decimals keep climbing. When I retrieved the thermometer, it recalled the last temperature taken some six weeks back. It was you it remembered, on the mend from strep throat and cooling to a pleasant 37 degrees. At that point we could finally breathe a little easier and stop taking your temperature at every step. The ruby-colored antibiotic coursed through your veins and, like a beautiful poison, killed everything it needed to kill. Nice how the thermometer calls up only happy days. At the height of your illness, your temperature was just shy of 41, and you were hot as an oven. Your joints, your forehead, and your neck could fry an egg. Shame we didn’t try that instead of all those mind-numbing science experiments you had to do for homework (like bringing water to a boil and dissolving sugar in it). Now my temperature’s sure to catch up to yours—hey, maybe I’ll break our household record. I won’t be getting any medals for that. No one will even know my insides are charred, my pyres burn so softly. Besides, all the longevity experts would say that it’s perfectly logical I got sick, that it’d be a medical miracle had I not. Since you’ve been gone, I don’t keep track of the days, I barely leave the apartment, and rarely eat any produce. Lettuce and chard don’t twirl their lavish little green dresses on my plate, and I can’t remember the last time I sliced into and ate a piece of fruit, my chin dripping with its healthful, vitamin-rich juice. I go through the motions, eating enough to keep myself alive. I appease my hunger with frozen food. Bright orange fish sticks, all of equal size, pastries baked, frozen, then baked again, reheated chicken nuggets that once made up a chirping chorus boiling in oil, sauces that only needed to be thawed, and let’s not forget the frozen fries made from a powder of some sort… All the things I’d absolutely forbid you to eat—and I’d throw in a free lecture on nutrition too. But look at me now. I consume the worst of the worst, with the hope you’ll never find out. All of it removed from its plastic packaging, quickly reheated, and eaten with no appetite. Packaging covered in names of artificial additives piled up, while my stomach turned into a waste incinerator. It doesn’t even matter: you came out of there long ago. And, well, there’s now an imposing tower of recyclables in the entryway. Once I muster up the energy, I should destroy all traces of evidence that could discredit me in your eyes. I trudge through the apartment in the flames of my fever like some Jan Palach and my tottering brings the obelisk of recyclables down—an apocalyptic shower of packaging with still lifes of burnt-through pastries, of fish carcass mannequins for processed fish sticks, of chicken nuggets round and shiny like Olympic gold, of abstract pizza shapes, down to wrappers that once contained Jaffa cakes, which you crumbled in your mouth just weeks ago, making a purée of chocolate, cracker, and orange jelly. Everything was now level with the parquet floor like a building flattened by a powerful missile. The cascade uncovered your school primers, which you slipped into the recycling bin at the school year’s end—only now apparent to me. You hastily buried them lest the primers’ pages grab a hold of you like spine-chilling tentacles while your brain’s on summer vacation. Instead, your mind’s safe to keep in rhythm with light Dalmatian melodies while your peers are being dismembered in Gaza. This morning I was woken by a synthetic version of the Fifth Symphony: it was the cry of your forgotten Tamagotchi. An ominous start to the day. O primers, long forgotten, I know you all would join me on the highway moving at a snail’s pace, eager to reach the Island where you are, cooled by the ocean currents like an expensive champagne. The Tamagotchi would run to greet you, jumping on you and licking your knees, scraped up in some game, while it blared the notes of “Ode to Joy.” But I can already see us all, primers dear and forgotten: our insides scattered and shredded past the first intersection. You primers, too, remember only happy days, when innocent little hands filled your pages, the same hands that, soon as school was out for the year, wiped you all from the face of the earth. Good morning, primers! Good morning, Mommy!, the primers answer. Good morning! Good day! I’m in the sky, come outside! My little sunshine! Here’s some vitamin D, Mommy! You’ve just been eating junk, Mommy—bad Mommy! How beautifully the apples in your primers multiply! How heavy the trees are with oranges and bananas—all carefully tended by your little hands like a diligent farmer, all neatly arranged across the page like an unending production line. If you remove on from orange, you’re left with rage. If you remove ana from banana, you’re left with ban. But why wouldn’t you remove that stupid ban instead, leaving you with a cheery Ana? Ha-ha, silly primer, you remember only happy days and everything’s just nice and peachy in your pages! Words written together: isn’t, aren’t, amiss. Oh, how I miss you! Separated: not letting,not allowed, not going. My parents, you add, scribbling dejectedly. You draw a sad face with a teardrop. My little cloud. If only your rainy little hand could rest on my burning forehead and heal my soul. In solitude, I’m reading your primers and burning up. Like a raging blaze. The thermometer doesn’t have the numbers for this fire. Even Anders Celsius is petrified. How nice it would be to slip into the sea and surrender all my supercharged worries. You’re there now, floating gently on the surface without a care. And without me. There was a time we’d take a dip together in that blue expanse. I, treading cautiously, avoiding sea urchins, and you, safely tucked inside my stomach like in a submarine. The ocean here and now! The farmer and the plow! Airplanes fly by night like owls! Underline the rhymes, children dears: lineage – pillage, flood – blood, humiliation, fortification, annihilation… Good morning! Good day! I’m in the sky, come outside, I’m not the Sun, guess who I am, ha-ha-ha! An airplane dropping bombs on the city! When rooster loses er, you get roost. When Germany loses Ger, you get many. When school loses sh, you get cool. When the school loses its roof, you get a school without a roof. When the school loses its roof and walls, there’s no more school. Wounded students carpool to the hospital. I’m burning like a torch. The smart thermometer smolders. It’s of no use now. I need to lock it away in a drawer to rot and remember only the happy days, together with your Tamagotchi, until their batteries die. My brain’s succumbing to fever, my head shoots off sparks, I can no longer read properly! Vitamins, Mommy! Tan Mommy Ivy! Bring the vitamins! Stain the bin! No—aim at ban! Not the van! I’m rescued by your oranges. Calm down, Ana, ban’s out to sea, calm down, Mommy, take some vitamin C! the Jaffa oranges tell me. They’re juicy, they’re sweet, with thick peels, and no seeds. The seeds sow shadows, masks hide disgrace. Seeds recede, the fruit seized, the children count their last days. They, corpses, while death curtsies. Little Jaffa oranges in the clutches of sadness turning their sweet juices to salt. Mommy, what are you talking about? Mommy, who are you talking to?, the letters of the primer ask. The reheated food steams, the walls have ears! I’m talking to the wall, primer dear! I’m talking to the wall! Appealing to a pale glimmer! I’m prattling on, this damned fever! You’re burning up, Mommy! When grazed loses red, you get Gaza. G like grim. G like genocide. And you, how you cling to me when it thunders. When fireworks go off, you spring awake and ask, soaked and disoriented: ’at was that? Yes, what was that, my little baby, you hold your blanket tight, sweating in mortal fear. P like pyrotechnics. Definitely not P like plush flamingo, innocent little baby! There was pleading, panic, peril, pillage, pandemonium, prelude to the Fifth, Palach, Palestine… I scorch your primer with my fiery pen. Silence strolls along the empty street, no one thinks of poor Pete. Even god has abandoned Pete. On the staff I compose a lullaby for pleading babies. Heavy notes. Help! Babies! Help! Burning babies! Chuck slices of cheese at them like in those viral videos, ha-ha-ha. That should calm them. Pour sugary water on them! They’ll be soothed by the sweet flavor, P like predatory behavior. You’re burning up, Mommy! My forehead glows, my eyelids droop, the cheese on my head melts. The olive tree burns. The orange tree burns. People burn. Danger: Fire! We’re fading, fading in silence. We’re dying, dying in solitude. Performers play, politicians piss pyrotechnics! Is this a primer or a school restroom?! I’m shaken by fiery ice. I shake off the ice and the fire still consumes me. You’re burning, primer! You’re burning, little house! You’re delirious, Mommy! The grenade thunders, thunders! ’At was that? Little girl, quick, hide under the blanket! People die in solitude! People die in solitude! Can anyone hear?! Ears have walls! Ears have walls! Ears have thick walls.
Translator’s Note:
This piece is Maša through and through: it’s packed down, like a late-capitalist landfill exploding with word play. There’s heat, trash, synthetic music, a sense of distance and of distancing. Even the recycling becomes “imposing,” requiring energy—from you, from others, from the earth—to process this “shower of packaging” that once contained processed goods. All this makes it a companion read to her short story “Konzuming,” which also appears in ANMLY.
Generating word play is one thing, and it’s a method Maša and I both love dearly in our writing. But translating word play is a different ballgame: by the end of the first few lines, I wanted to translate the piece; by the end of the first page, I wondered why I would ever wish such a translation project upon myself. The initial wall turned out to be a moveable partition: I spoke with Maša and asked whether she’d be okay if I replaced the apple in Croatian—“jabuka”—with an orange. She told me I could write it however I wanted, a trust I never take for granted. “If you remove on from orange, you’re left with rage.”
By the time I got to “Underline the rhymes, children dears,” I knew I was in trouble. Maša writes:
Although the line was notably longer in English, I was happy what came out of rewriting words (over and over and over) that were renditions of “brother – war, boiling – blood, shame, wall, genocide,” a barer translation of the original. Here’s another example:
Kad gazda izgubi d, nastaje Gaza.
Which, in more literal terms, could read “When landlord [or boss, or manager] loses d, you get Gaza. G like thunder. G like grenade. G like genocide.” I quickly recognized how few Zs there actually are in the English language, and how fewer still scramble to “Gaza.” (Translation can be a salve: those moments grant you time to focus on doing justice to the language of witnessing.) After an hour of saying words out loud, sometimes in alphabetical riffs, I came up with “grazed,” which embeds “razed,” and also stretches to “Gaza.” The word “thunder” doesn’t start with the letter G—even AI knows that. But “grim” had the sound, and then I eventually saw it as the best option. So:
When grazed loses red, you get Gaza.
A note about the dedication to Dubravka Ugrešić. It honors the central role Yugoslav primers played in Ugrešić’s work. You find lines from those first readers as epigraphs to essays in The Age of Skin, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać, and visually represented in exhibitions, like The Red School, given new life by Vlad Beronja for harlequin creature’s final issue. Ugrešić died in 2023.
Maša Kolanović is a prize-winning author best known for her 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 price (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 Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb.
Ena Selimović is a Yugoslav-born writer and translator. Her work has appeared in Words Without Borders, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her latest full-length translation—Maša Kolanović’s Underground Barbie—is out with Sandorf Passage. Her translation of Tatjana Gromača’s novella Crnac (Black) recently won Trafika Europe’s Prize for Prose in 2025. She holds a PhD in comparative literature.
Roaming the land, he sought safety from death, and died. I only wish I knew what wrong killed you and why. Did you die sick, untended? Or slain asleep at night? Or was your stroke of chance what killed the desert shrike? Wherever young men roam the Fates in ambush lie. Everything that you won came at the hardest price. All things are murderous when you come to your Time. What good that young men have did you lack in your life? Disaster deafens you to questions I now cry. I’ll steel myself, for you will never again reply. I wish my heart could face your death a moment’s time. I wish the Fates had spared your life, and taken mine.
Vengeance at Dawn
Attributed to Al-Muhalhil of Taghlib
My night of wake was long at An’amayn with ceaseless stars stuck in my sleepless gaze. How can I age in life when a slain man of Taghlib leaves me with a man to slay? Chide eyes for tears shed over tentmark ruins. A breast-born wound is torn over Kulayb. A need throbs in the breast unsatisfied so long as doves among the branches wail. How can he ever weep over ruined things who pledged to war with men in every age? Can I forget Kulayb before I’ve quelled the sorrow whelming me in bloodparched rage? My heart today make good your bloodwit vow. When they ride out at dawn, retaliate. They fetch their bows and we flash lightning bolts as stallions taking on their stallion prey. We steel ourselves under their flashing steel till they fall pounded by our long hard blades and can keep up no more. We keep attacking. Whoever keeps the field is war’s true mate.
Lament for His People in Rawḥān
Attributed to ʿAbīd bin Al-Abraṣ
Were those my people’s dwellings that in the stoneland lie? They are now a dwindled vestige changed by the hands of Time. There did I halt my camel to question what remained, But turned away with tears gushing from my eyes In streams as though my lids that moment had burst forth The downpour of a cloud from winter-laden skies. Oh mine was once the kindest of ordinary peoples To all who had fallen captive or ill, or on hard times, Good when they drew lots for camel-meat when winds Blew winter-hard, and neighbors united as a tribe. And when the moment called for spear-thrusts, they always did Color their spears from tip to hilt in the grim dye. And when the moment called for blades, they always did Beat back the foe as lions protective of their pride. And when they heard the call “Dismount!” they always rushed In coats of mail on foot headlong into the fight. They are gone. I am still here but I am not forever. Change is the fate of things, the many shades of life. God knows what I know not about the end they met. What I have is remembrance of things lost in their time.
The Cycle of Death: A Muʿallaqah
Attributed to ʿAbīd bin Al-Abraṣ
The people are all gone out of Malḥūb, and Al-Quṭabiyyāt, and Al-Dhanūb. The people are all gone, too, out of Rākis and out of Al-Qalīb and Dhāt Firqayn And ʿArda and Qafā Ḥibirr and Thuʿaylibāt. There’s nowhere in the land where we remain. The land has taken in the wild and beastly instead of its own people. Things have changed. A land inherited by death it is. All who once lived there have been raided, razed, Slain by the blade, or left to die alone. Grey hair marks only a survivor’s shame. The tears gush from your eyes, as if their ducts were waterskins too hole-filled to retain A single drop, or as cascades of water down hillside gullies newly washed in rain, Or as a torrent through a wādī bed flooding the valley to a waterway, Or a slight stream slow under bending palms wending with a wet murmur in their shade.
How can you yearn for youth’s fling, when your hair warns of a date with death in going gray? Oh if this land is changed, its people scattered, don’t wonder. Theirs is not the first such fate, Though all of that expanse be now deserted though it now havens drouth and dearth and plague. There is no hope too firm for life to break, no happiness life will not wrest away. No camel that won’t pass to heirs in death, no plunderer but is plundered for his take. All who are gone on journeys may return but all who are gone in death have passed away. Is a barren womb a peer to fertile women? Is a failed raider peer to men who gain? Go prosper how you will. Sometimes the weak achieve. Sometimes skilled men are tricked astray. Men won’t warn him who will not heed the warnings of Fate. To teach of wisdom is to fail Without the heart-born gift of disposition. Too often has a friend fallen to hate. Give aid in any land you find yourself in, and say not to yourself “I am a stranger.” You can grow close with people from afar and be cut off from closest of relations. Man founders in deceit, all the age of his life. Torture for him is a life into old age.
I have reached many slime-aged, still water pools traveling deathly, terrifying wastes, with plumes of pigeon carcasses strewn about. The frenzied heart heaves fearful of the place. I passed it on my weary way in worry. I and my brawny mount in morning haze. My mount: a camel, onager-swift, strong-spined her withers smooth as dunes on windless days, A nine-year tush has replaced her seven-year tooth, not too young or too old, in her prime age Like a wild ass gone rushing through the reeds, dark-furred with fight-scars round the neck and face. Or like an oryx at his peak that feeds on bindweed1 as the northwinds round him rage. But that’s an age ago. I see myself born by a swift, big-bodied mare again Her frame firm to perfection, and her forelocks cleaving wide in the clearing of her face, Oil-fluid her every movement, veins asleep, with a lithely gliding supple healthy shape. She seems an eagle ready for the hunt, to fill her nest with hearts plucked from her prey, Who spends the night perched high upon a rock like an old woman looking for her babies. Then there she is in piercing cold at dawn where hoarfrost-dripping feathers gleam with day. She sights a meaty fox out in the distance, nothing between them but one barren waste. She shakes frost off her feathers, shakes herself alert and ready to launch out and take, Then takes flight swifter than a hungry spear, aiming in one sharp swipe to fell her prey. He hears her wings, and lifts his tail in terror as creatures will do only when afraid. He spots her swoop, and crouches to a crawl. He looks up at her and his scared eyes gape. She takes him, flings him onto the brute rock, crippling the prey beneath her in sheer pain. She lifts him up, then dashes him back down. His face is scraped with stones. His body breaks. The talons tear into his flank. He squeals. His breast is pierced. His heart, food. No escape.
Storm over Najd (From the Mu’allaqah)
Attributed to Imru’l-Qays
…..Do you see lightning, friend? Look there: its flash forks through the cumulus like fingers, quick to shed its distant light; there: like the lit lamp of a monk who tilts oil on the wick. I sat to watch it with my friends, between Ḍārij and Al-Udhayb. Oh I gazed far enough to see the storm raise its right arm on Mount Qaṭan, its left on Al-Sitār, and dump its rainload round Kutayfa, slamming trees’ faces to the ground as it went wide. Its shower bucked on over Mount Qanān sluicing the mountain goats off every side. It left no palm-trunk standing at Taymā nor building built of anything but rock. Tall Mount Thabīr stood in its water-onslaught like a tribe’s chieftain in a stripelined cloak. At dawn, debris on Al-Mujaymir’s peaks lay strewn like spun wool on a spindle-tip. The storm had left its load upon the desert like goods a merchant loosens from his hip. That morning, finches noised about the dales as if blind drunk on pepper-fiery wine. That evening, raptors lay drowned at its edge like ripped-out squills that freakishly entwine.
Ode on the Capture of Al-Hadath “The Red City” for Lord Ali the Realmsword
By Al-Mutanabbi
Resolutions measure a man’s resolve and noble deeds a noble name. Small deeds loom large to little eyes and great deeds shrink in a great man’s gaze. Behold Lord Ali of the house of Hamdan. See how Realmsword is rightly his name. From his forces he wills the force of his will which hardgut brigades can hardly attain. He expects of his men no more than himself, more than the most lord-souled of lions can claim. Agelong vultures in the vast drylands would give their lives to guard his blades. They’d meet no harm even if made talonless since his sturdy arms of steel were made. Does that Red City still realize her color1, whether cloudbursts brought the blood or the rain? Where first she drank of flashing clouds she drank skull-wine the day he came. While blade beat blade he built and braced her where she shook from the force of the Fates’ brute waves. She lay mad in the hold of an unholy spell that dead bodies broke at break of day.
Though Fate-displaced to a foreign creed, your swords’ war-strike restored her Faith. What nights yield to you is yours forever. What they steal from you they soon must repay. Plans you pass are verbs in the present now having moved to past before men can negate them. No Roman or Viking2 could raze that stronghold raised with pikethrusts for pillars and base. No wronged man died and no wrongdoer lived when they called her to justice. The Judge was Fate.
So clad in steel they came at you their coursers seemed legless crossing the plain. When they flashed, their blades all blended in with steel garments aglint with day, A war-throng crawling from west and east clamoring till the ears of Orion ached, A tongue-tangled troop of peoples with translators for each order relayed.
Then that molten time melted fake mettle till only war-metal and men remained. Every lance shattered unless it shattered bulwarks of bloodwood and bucklers and mail And fools gutless in fear of gutting fled from the ranks of fighters that day. Where standing meant death you stood your ground as if on the sleeping eyes of utter bane. While wounded, fear-fouled fighters ran past you you fought with a smile and a sun for a face and went beyond bounds of bravery and reason till they said you knew the Numen’s ways.
I know how hawks will hold birds down in a grip to gut their grounded game. You squeezed foes’ wings on a squirm-wild heart and dealt hard death to downstruck prey. You skivered skulls when you still hadn’t won then vitals and throats as victory came. You detested lances and tossed them aside, your sword spitting on spears at close range.
Let any who quest for conquest’s light see its luster bare in lightweight blades. You strewed them hard over Uháydib like coins strewn over a woman on her wedding day. Your horses trampled the hilltop nests where fodder galore before them lay. Eaglets imagined their mothers were back not the stout wingfoot steeds that raced till they slipped and you had them belly-sliding across the earth like crawling snakes.
Will the Domesticus3 dare every day against you with his neck fighting his advancing face? Does he not sense lions’ scent till he tastes it? Even wildbeasts can sense a lion on the way. Our leader’s sorties struck him hard when his son, his wife’s brother and his son-in-law slain. Troops helped him scamp to escape the swords that were busy hacking their heads away. He got the message of masterwork steel to his men, though told in the tongue of strangers. Not stupid, he was glad to give up the fight when after his loss even life was a gain. You are no mere king who conquers his peer but the one God’s triumph over triune pagans, You have ennobled all North Arabs, Pride of the Outlands4 and all creation. It’s you who should be praised for my proud verse-pearls I simply string. You set the shape. Your gifts gallop through the grind of war so you bear no regrets and I no blame On a steed whose feet fly to battle as soon as it hears the howling fray.
Oh Realmsword unsheathed and ready forever, held in no doubt nor held at bay. Joy to skull-strikers, to stout men’s deeds, to them that love you and Islam: you are safe. And why wouldn’t God still guard your edge to behead his foes with you for a blade?
قالت المرءة في رثاء فتى
طافَ يَبغي نَجْوَةً مَن هَلَاكٍ فهَلَك لَيتَ شِعْري ضَلَّةً أيّ شيءٍ قَتَلَك أَمريضٌ لم تُعَدْ أَم عدوٌّ خَتَلَك أم تَوَلّى بِكَ ما غالَ في الدهْرِ السُّلَك والمنايا رَصَدٌ للفَتىً حيثُ سَلَك طالَ ما قد نِلتَ في غَيرِ كَدٍّ أمَلَك كلُّ شَيءٍ قاتلٌ حينَ تلقَى أجَلَك أيّ شيء حَسَنٍ لفتىً لم يَكُ لَك إِنَّ أمراً فادِحاً عَنْ جوابي شَغَلَك سأُعَزِّي النفْسَ إذ لم تُجِبْ مَن سأَلَك ليتَ قلبي ساعةً صَبْرَهُ عَنكَ مَلَك ليتَ نَفْسي قُدِّمَت للمَنايا بَدَلَك
قال المهلهل التغلبي
باتَ لَيلي بالأَنْعَمَين طَويلا أَرْقُبُ النَجْمَ ساهِراً لَنْ يَزولا كَيف أٌمدي ولَا يزالُ قتيلٌ مِن بَني وائلٍ يُنادي قتيلا أُزْجُرِ الْعَينَ أَنْ تُبَكِّي الطُلولا إِنَّ في الصَدْرِ مِنْ كُلَيبٍ فَليلا إِنَّ في الصَدْرِ حاجةً لَنْ تُقَضَّى ما دَعا في الغُصونِ داعٍ هَديلا كَيفَ يَبْكي الطُلولَ مَن هو رَهْنٌ بِطِعانِ الأنامِ جيلا فَجِيلا إِنَّ في الصَدْرِ حاجةً لَنْ تُقَضَّى ما دَعا في الغُصونِ داعٍ هَديلا كَيفَ يَبْكي الطُلولَ مَن هو رَهْنٌ بِطِعانِ الأنامِ جيلا فَجِيلا كَيف أَنساكَ يا كلَيبُ ولمّا أقضِ حُزناً ينوبُني وغَليلا أيُّها القَلبُ أَنْجِزِ اليومَ نَحْباً مِن بني الحِصْنِ إذ غَدوا وذُحولا انتَضَوا مَعْجِسَ القِسي وأَبْرَقْـنا كَما تُوعِد الفُحولُ الفُحولا وصَبَرْنا تَحتَ البوارِقِ حتَّى دَكْدَكَتْ فيهِمِ السُيوفُ طَويلا لم يُطيقوا أنْ يَنْزِلوا ونَزَلْنا وَأَخو الحَربِ مَن أَطاقَ النُزولا
1“Outlands” is my rendering of ˁawāṣim. The word has often been misread as meaning “capitals” which is its sense in Modern Arabic. The term ˁawāṣim here refers to a part of the frontier zone between the Byzantine Empire and the Empire of the Caliphs. The forward strongholds of this zone were called ṯuġūr “mouths”, while those further rearward were called the ˁawāṣim “guardianesses”.
2Domesticus (or, rather δομέστικος) was Bardas’ Byzantine military title, loaned into Arabic as dumustuq, which is the word Al-Mutanabbī uses.
3“Red” was a term that could be used for non-Arabs, especially Persians, Greeks or “Franks” (Western Europeans) who were seen as being of lighter complexion. E.g. Atānī kullu aswada minhum wa’aḥmar “Every one of them, Arab and not, came to me”. A saying attributed to Muhammad has it that buˁiṯtu ilā l-‘aḥmari wa-l-aswad “I was sent to the red and the black” of which the most straightforward interpretation is “to all mankind, Arab and not.” The term Al-Ḥamrā’ as a collective adjective may also be used to refer generically to foreigners, or to emancipated slaves. Al-Hadaṯ Al-Ḥamrā’ “Red Hadath” is the traditional appellation of the city. The color is — I think — being played on at multiple levels. She (the city is morphosyntactically feminine) is in the most obvious sense “red” after being soaked with blood. But she was also a “red” (foreign, Greek) city when under Byzantine rule, which she no longer is. She is now “red” (emancipated from bondage) now that Lord Realmsword has relieved her of foreign control. Despite her traditional appellation, she may not even know that she is now red in one sense, and was red in the other, so completely has she now been redeemed to her proper place under Islamdom.
4The original text uses the word Rūs which in Modern Arabic simply means “Russians.” Anglophone commenters on this poem have usually so translated it, and Arabic commentaries often leave the word unglossed as though its meaning were transparent. But the Arabic word Rūs, at this time, actually referred to Norsemen (specifically the Byzantine Varangian guard is probably what is meant.) Since English “Rus” is far too scholarly, and “Norsemen” would be a bit too specific, I have used the most readily intelligible term Vikings.
Translator’s Note:
This is a collection put together specifically for ANMLY, in response to the desire for “work that is recalcitrant, wayward, rebellious…formally…or in some clever way that hasn’t occurred to us yet” and work that is “too resistant to have yet reached English-reading ears”. The form I use to translate most of these selections has never been attempted in translating Arabic poetry into English before. Even the form that my translator notes below take is likewise unorthodox, combining a neutral scholarly voice in prose with responses in verse. Each note opens with my poetic response to the poem and its author.
I have loved Arabic poetry since I first knew enough Arabic to be able to read some in my early 20s. I have spent the past four years of my life focusing on early Arabic poetry while preparing my dissertation on it. For sedentary peoples who do not live a pastoral life in the desert (which includes not only the earliest commentators but probably everyone who will ever read these words) it is material from a lost world and making it accessible to people in this one takes some doing. It is notoriously difficult to make work in English translation. It has historically been difficult for English-speaking learners of Arabic to learn to even appreciate. Even quite educated modern Arabic speakers generally read it in editions full of glosses and notes. There is no shortage of translations of pre-modern and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, but the most successful of them (in my view) are either quite old or quite relentless in domesticating this poetry into the idioms of contemporary English readership. I have included one later Islamic-era poem as a coda.
The question of how to translate traditional Arabic poetry has vexed many Euroglot translators. Arabic poetry is traditionally not only metrical (using a quantitative system akin to that of Greek or Latin verse) but rhymed. Moreover, it is monorhymed. The same rhyme-sound repeats itself through the poem, sometimes over a hundred or more lines. While there are European languages (Russian is one of them) that can accomodate such a constraint, they do not include English. What I have done in most of these selections is use assonance instead, where the function of rhyme is performed by identity of vowels, regardless of the consonants after them. Different languages have different traditions areound assonance as a formal feature. It is the norm in Old Irish poetry, for example. It is reasonably common in Modern Dutch poetry. It is exceedingly normal in Spanish poetry. It is very rare in English, though there is no intrinsically linguistic reason why this should be so. As a translator, I’m often on the lookout for opportunities to do interesting things with form, and assonance to me seemed like a useful way to handle the constraint of Arabic monorhyme in English. In all but one of these selections, I have done so. It is the fashion to seek idiomaticity and contemporaneity at all costs in translation. I have disagreed, and felt free to use more archaic or recondite language when the tone and moment seemed to call for it.
The Unknown 6th Century Arabian Woman Who Composed a Lament in Abu Tammam’s Hamasa
You did not know what killed him, but we do not even know his name. The gods that maim our memory spared little more of you than sand-stung tremolos, heart’s salt, a name of Woman Steeled in Grief, a nomad cry the blending centuries vortexed into life as mother, sister, daughter, aunt and wife of a young man cast out by kin to die. Lines scratched into the manuscript like rock as time sandblasts mere lineage from the mind bear ghastly filiation. This is shock no human should forget. Gods gouge me blind if ever I tune out that underbreath in which you live to mourn, that death is death.
This short poem, which seems to be pre-Islamic, is preserved in a personal collection of poetry compiled by Abū Tammām. The attribution found in the Ḥamāsa is probably false, and the only clues as to the poem’s provenance would seem to be the features of the text itself. Like Arab commentators I find it difficult to shake the sense that the man being lamented is a ṣuʿlūk. (The word is usually translated as “outlaw” though the term “desperado” conveys more of the Arabic word’s flavor.) A ṣuʿlūk, as the tradition would have it, was a man who had been exiled by his tribe and was forced to eke out a painful, empty-bellied and often short life on his own. If one is to believe the sources (and here the general picture seems to me more likely to have some truth to it than any specific instances), despite the terrible consequences of exile, it was not infrequent. Sometimes the man in question may have simply been an obnoxious and intolerable person too maladjusted for communitarian tribal life. In most cases, though, it would have been for serious crimes which made the man impossible to trust or a liability to retain, acts which might would bring shame upon, or even incur outside aggression against, the entire tribe if the individual responsible was not cast out. If, for example, a man were to kill a member of another tribe in a way that his community could not support, then he might have to be exiled. To keep him around would be to condone his action and therefore essentially an act of war.
Al-Muhalhil of Taghlib
Grief weighs like camel knees upon the nape of Al-Muhalhil. Bloodlust like disease multiplies from the manic gut. Agape his own damn heart will gulp him to the lees. Virulent now the cry AVENGE KULAYB bloats eyes blind. Fuck eventualities. He’ll really do it. Nobody foresees a sundown from a melted astrolabe. His verse is that. White of a bloodshot eye. Sparks between ribs. Quit drink, swear off the whore for spearing till the Banū Bakr die. What happened then? Think. You have likely seen what happens when your captain for a war thinks from a brain all versified to spleen.
ʿAdī bin Rabīʿa of Taghlib, commonly known as Al-Muhalhil “The Verse-weaver.” Born presumably at the very end of the 5th century, he is among the earliest Pre-Islamic Arabian poets to whom any surviving verse of substantive length is attributed. He is chiefly known for poems dealing with the Basūs War, in which a 40-year feud between the Banū Taghlib and the Banū Bakr was supposedly ignited when his brother Kulayb was killed for slaughtering another tribe’s stray camel. While pre-Islamic tribal poetry might be crudely summarized as a literature of love, loss, pride and war, the social order it appears to suggest is dominated by feuding, ancient grudges and warfare in defense of honor, a world in which existence itself was a dangerous game, where stoicism and hardiness were the only refuge from the callous Fates and inevitable heartbreak.
ʿAbīd bin al-Abraṣ
Old tentmarks in the stoneland of Rawhan from a tribe crushed by what he dared not name are long gone. Sagas peopled round a man in verses from the dark. This he became. Read him. Feel arteries reel as wastewinds blow blood to a shivered heart. Stare up through skies into a hawk’s imaginary eyes where brains aim claws with no such thing as No, and grasp the comfort, safe from wings or kings, in treading shadows. You have not yet died. Have you not seen how desert sunrise swings survivor creatures to a hill’s dark side? ʿAbīd is now an echo of such things and helps me walk through time with humbler pride.
The poetry attributed to the pre-Islamic poet ʿAbīd bin Al-Abraṣ, like that attributed to Al-Muhalhil, is traditionally reckoned by medieval commentators to be among the very earliest to survive. Judging by the fact that his most famous of poems has an anomalous meter that falls outside the meters allowable in classical prosody, as well as the fairly high frequency of anomalous syntactic constructions and unusual vocabulary of most of his work (anomalous and unusual, that is, from the point of view of the later and better-understood stages of Arabic) there is no reason to disagree with them on this point, at least with regard to the bulk of the material. Fortunately for the modern reader of Early Arabic (or, at least, fortunately for me) ʿAbīd’s language is often as moving as it is difficult, the more so thanks to his most frequent subject: the disaster that befell his tribe, the Banū Asad. The nature of the disaster remains unspecified in the poems and therefore unknown to us, but judging by the evidence from the poems it would have involved some sort of attack by superior forces (presumably one of the sedentary Arab kingdoms) which left many of the Banū Asad dead, and forced most of the rest to flee much of their former territory. The historical reality underlying the poetry is murky and probably will never be cleared up. The information on ʿAbīd’s life accompanying the poetry in Islamic literary compendia does not help much, as it has every sign of being based more on the poems than anything else, though it may contain some refraction of general truth about conflict with Kindite royalty. In any case, even admitting the qualifications which must attend any corpus which has gone through centuries of oral transmission, I see no substantive reason not to read the body of material attributed to ʿAbīd as (more or less) genuine pre-Islamic in content. That does not prove, of course, that all such early work attributed to ʿAbīd is necessarily by him. It may well be that only a few poems are genuinely his (if any) and that ʿAbīd as we know him is a half-archetypal figure around whose name various early poems of disparate authorship, containing a particular species of tribal lamentation, coagulated. If true, this would account for some the toponymic discrepancies that perplexed the commentators. Moreover, as is the case with most pre-Islamic poets, some (though by no means most) of the content which bears the poet’s name seems (on linguistic grounds as much as anything) to come from a much later period.
The second of the two poems translated here attributed to ˁAbīd is a “Muʿallaqah”. The muʿallaqāt (plural) are a collection of pre-Islamic poems especially esteemed by tradition. The origin of the term muʿallaqa has been much debated. Traditionally it is understood to mean “that which is suspended, hung up” and to refer to poems which were so illustrious as to earn the honor of being hung on the walls of the Kaʿba at Mecca. This explanation, which goes back to the tenth century and is part of common knowledge among educated Arabs even today, has largely been rejected by scholarship as entirely fictitious and based on little more than folk etymology. The most probable explanation for the term is that it was originally the title of the first section of the anthology compiled by Abū Zayd Al-Qurašī entitled Jamharatu Ašʿāri l-ʿArab, with the term al-muʿallaqāt meaning something like “the precious” (other sections have similar titles such as al-muntaqayāt “the chosen.”) There was uncertainty for a long time as to precisely which poems were muʿallaqāt. The poem translated here is a muʿallaqa by some reckonings, but not most.
Imru’l Qays
How much to know of him I do not know. The name’s no name. His great work’s making loi- -ters, time-dilated, linked to one mind no more than Achilles’ shield to Schliemann’s Troy. It’s there, though. Lightning over Najd forever forks hands through crownbright clouds. In nights like seas sky-hitched ropes no philology can sever anchor Mount Yadhbul to the Pleiades as waves break on the brain with cares. You see ruins, and know the nomad here must cry. So stop and weep with him in memory in verses vaguely true, knowing they lie strung as the faint remainder of a day, the windblown trace of campments gone away.
This translation is an excerpt from the muʿallaqah attributed to Imru’l-Qays, the most famous of all pre-Islamic poems. I have rendered it in full rhyme and have not used any kind of monorhyme, in part to showcase a different formal approach. How much of the material preserved under Imru’l-Qays’ name really goes back to him is an undecided question. This poem probably grew and was expanded in the course of its transmission. My translation of the finale of the famous Mu’allaqa attributed to Imru’l Qays. A terrific thunderstorm rages over the mountains on the northern edge of the Najd. The scene is imagined over so vast an area that it must be poetic fiction. (As the medieval commentators note: Sitār, Yadhbul and Qaṭan cannot possibly all be seen from the same place.) Legends abound about Imru’l Qays, and there is no real reason to credit them as historical. Even his real name is unknown. Imru’l Qays was a nickname.
Al-Mutanabbi
At court he learned disguise, to measure tears in melody, to make his manias ride a bridled beast and flatter the Amirs who stood in terror of the terrified. As a boy, earlier than most, he’d spied how words mean more than merely what they mean and rode the hearts of Bedouin. Having seen a fluent life, end-stopped by thieves, he died a friend to desert knights to his last breath, to sword and spear, to parchment and his pen. His patrons’ fame has emptied out its men like scum that made a marsh now dried to death under his vatic glow. He’s lived to curse his masters into footnotes to his verse.
The year is 954 A.D. Al-Ḥadath Al-Ḥamrā’ is a strategically important town on the Arab-Byzantine border, between Mar’aš and Malaṭiyah, which depended for protection on a fortress built on nearby Mount Uḥaydib. After being captured and demilitarized in 950 by the Byzantines, it was retaken in October of 954 by Sayfu l-Dawla Abū Ḥasan Bin Ḥamdān, the Emir of Aleppo (whom I have seen fit to anglicize unorthodoxly as Lord Ali the Realmsword) who set about refortifying it, only to be interrupted by the appearance of Byzantine forces under the command of Bardas Phocas. Before the end of the month, a decisive battle was fought around Mount Uhaydib. After a day of heavy fighting, Lord Realmsword with a small company of hardened men broke through the Byzantine line. Bardas’ forces retreated, leaving members of his own family as prisoners. Lord Realmsword was then able to finish up the fortification of Al-Hadath, whereupon he had the pleasure of hearing his court poet Abū Ṭayyib Al-Mutanabbī recite the poem translated here in celebration of the occasion. This poem is easily Al-Mutanabbī’s most famous. I include it here in part as a continuation of my process of formal experimentation with pre-modern Arabic verse. To translate this poem, I came up with a new verse-form that seemed fit for purpose, combining assonance with a four-beat alliterative meter (loosely based on Old English verse, though with many restrictions relaxed). I’ve never used that form since, and I don’t know if I ever will.
A. Z. Foreman is a literary translator, poet and language-acquisition addict currently working on a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. His translations from Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Latin, Occitan, Ukrainian, Russian, Irish and Yiddish have appeared in sundry publications including The Los Angeles Review, Metamorphoses, Blue Unicorn, Lunch Ticket, the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, Asymptote, Ilanot Review, Pusteblume and also two people’s tattoos. His own poetry has appeared in La Piccioletta Barca, Apricity, The Word’s Faire, Rundelandia, The Mid-Atlantic Review, 1922 Review, The Borough, In Parentheses, The Brazen Head, Grand Little Things, The Blue Unicorn and Jerkpoet. But most importantly, if you have a dog he’d love to pet it.
I seem to be one of those transplanted trees, unhealthy in a new country, but who will die if they return to the native land. Miguel Torga, Diary 1 March 5th, 1934
Lo que importa es la no-ilusión. La mañana nace. —Frida Kahlo, Diaries
The sky is so blue outside, but here inside, unrest.
Outside: almost November, spring breezes whisking away the last bad ghosts of winter, smell of flowers in remote gardens, smell of the first ripe mangoes, strawberries misplaced amidst the carbon monoxide from cars jamming the streets. Inside: the unmoving line, a broken air conditioner, plump ladies running over people through narrow aisles without saying sorry, their overflowing carts as deadly as war tanks, cybernetic kids screaming for intergalactic toys, slow, rude, scary cashiers. And the sweat, nausea, and affliction of all the supermarkets in the world on Saturday mornings.
She looked at her own purchases. Crackers, sparkling water, brown rice and, in an outburst of indulgence, a jar of Argentinian peach jam. “Duraznos,”she repeated, fascinated. She liked the sounds of words. And couldn’t even count on her free hands to fan herself. The woman with an overstretched face crammed the counter with her provisions, two carts brimming with cholesterol and sugar blues. She sighed. She looked up, from where a CCTV camera spied on her, as if she was a potential thief. Trapped between gondolas in that gangway corridor, she also looked at the shelves on both sides, seeing mountains of plastic bags of green, pink, and yellow gummy bears, crackers flavored with bacon, onion, ham, cheese. And cans, piles of cans.
She sighed again, she used to sigh a lot, and looked outside one more time, beyond all those heads in front of her. The blue sky remained so fair and rare in that hateful city. Here inside, all she could do was remove one foot off her Havaiana – it was Saturday, “screw you”, that’s how she really felt – to place her toes, with very short and unpainted nails, over the other foot. There she was, like an egret perched amidst the sugary swamp. Her ample Indian skirt down to the ankles, patterned with many colors, the loose sleeveless blouse of white silk, the exact amount of money hidden in a pocket over her left breast. She lifted and rotated her swollen foot in the air to activate circulation. What if someone spotted her like that, not seeing her swollen foot invisible under the ample skirt? They’d call her one-legged girl, poor girl, all disheveled, wearing wrinkled hippie clothes, and above all, with only one leg. One-legged, equilibrist, not leaning on anything or anyone, no crutches, nor a cane. “Screw you,” she repeated, looking around, confrontational. But “screw you” was not enough for that mob. So, she growled: “Fuck you!” in a lower voice, but with enough hatred, exclamation point, capital letters and all. Then, she felt better, despite being exhausted, shameless and detoxed, the egret-girl.
That’s when she saw him standing in the line beside her, already passing through the cashier. He hadn’t put on weight, at least not on his face, and he wasn’t any balder. Although his skinny frame now carried a strange, artificial-looking belly. Sweaty circles under his armpits stained the synthetic fabric of his button-down, long-sleeved white shirt. Clumsily, not seeing her, he tried to shove his shopping items into plastic bags. Curious, tilting her head, she investigated them: vodka, whisky, Campari, piles of artificial savory snacks, mayonnaise, margarine, raw bloody sausages wrapped in newspaper, and another cart filled to the brim with beer cans, cheese, pâté – could it be a party? – more cans, many cans, mixed vegetables, tomato paste, tuna. The bags were tearing open, cans spilled onto the floor as he bowed, trying to pick them up, while still attempting to sign a check to pay, and nobody helped him. He was a man she knew a long time ago, when he was not yet this urbanite in a supermarket, but still a barely young man, recently arrived from years of political exile in Chile and Algeria. After that, a master’s degree in Paris in a subject she didn’t recall. She only knew he talked all the time of a certain simulacrum of a certain imagerie, sitting cross-legged on her lilac-and-mauve flowery cotton sofa, strongly tightening his legs to protect his balls, as if she was always on the verge of violating him the next second, talking and talking non-stop about Lacan and Althusser and Derrida and Baudrillard, mostly Jean Baudrillard, while she busied herself serving more chilled white wine with pistachios, contemplating the centerpiece of yellow roses, and taking heart in admiring him like that, so young, such a foreigner in his own country, terrorized with any possibility of touch from another human being on his sad, loveless, pale, coming-from-exile skin.
“You know how to live,” he used to say. She used to smile, unassuming, more sarcastic than flattered. He barely knew how much she toiled like a slave, in between her German translations, wiping walls with alcohol, vacuuming carpets, gathering curtains for the laundry, changing sheets every single day, washing dishes by hand, her reddened hands. She looked at her hands with melancholy when he said those things, while she stood by the sink lathering mostly white and silk clothes, because she didn’t, and probably she’d never, own a washing machine. Chopping carrots, radishes, and beets for raw salads, stirring in clay pots with a wooden spoon, she hated the microwave, forever and ever exhausted from it all. Her only comfort was the Astrud Gilberto and Chet Baker tape, those placid songs always in the background.
Clean, neat, hard worker, every day she was that kind of woman. Dead from exhaustion and from love without hope for that man who didn’t, and who’d never, see her as she really was, who’d never touch her either. He admired her, so he didn’t need to touch her. He granted her a superiority she didn’t own, so he didn’t have to kiss her. Disingenuous, songamonga, he collected names, telephone numbers, addresses of people and places probably useful someday for the Arduous Task of Being Successful, vampirizing each one of her friends, especially those who held some kind of power, editors, politicians, journalists, art gallery owners, movie directors, guarantors, producers. Seductive, insidious, irresistible – “Let’s have dinner sometime,” he insinuated, ambiguous, to everyone. For three years. He never gave her an orgasm. He never laid down naked by her side in bed, she also naked. At most, he would whisper sweet words like “Stay here, please stand against the glass window, the evening light is on your hair and I want to keep this image of you so beautiful, forever in my memory.”
No, she was not a fool. But, as a person who doesn’t give up on angels, fairies, baby-carrying storks, Greek islands, and Cinderella-like happy endings, she wanted to believe it. Until the sudden night when she couldn’t anymore, then threw glasses of whiskey at his face. And for days, called him late at night, drunk, leaving terrible messages in his answering machine threatening suicide, murder, lawsuits, and calling him a thief.
“I want – because I want! – my Astrud and Chet Baker tapes back, you bastard limp dick faggot,” she was so rough and irrational, repeating what her therapist had said, himself also exhausted of all of that, not specifically about him, but about all men in the world: A homosexual in the closet, who hasn’t given his ass until he’s thirty-five is bound to become a jerk, my dear. He was thirty-seven when they met. How old is he now? About forty-three or forty-four, and he was a Libra, of that kind who doesn’t know the exact time of his birth. And that disgusting belly, that Air of a Successful Person, the synthetic shirt, the sweat circles, those designer pleated pants, the cheap grocery plastic bags, three or four in each hand as he leaves the supermarket, almost fat, with a crooked back.
In the line, someone pushed her from behind with a cart. The cashier was waiting with a bored face and a provincial accent:
“Check, card, or cash, daaaaaarling?”
“Cash,” she said, throwing over the counter the twisted banknote as if it was a live serpent. Then, she picked up her few purchases and left.Ausgang!
Outside, the wind blew over her long skirt, sending it on a flight. “I’m not wearing panties,” she remembered. She thought about Carmen Miranda. Then let the skirt fly and fly. She took a deep breath. Strawberries, ripe mangoes, carbon monoxide, pollen, jasmines on suburban porches. The wind blew her red hair over her face. She shook her head to brush it away and walked slowly, in search of a street with no cars, a street lined with trees, a quiet street where she could walk alone and in no hurry all the way home. Not thinking of anything, with no bitterness, not even a vague nostalgia, rejection, resentment, or melancholy. Nothing inside and out beyond that almost-November, that Saturday, that breeze, that blue sky – a non-pain, after all.
Translator’s Note:
Caio Fernando Abreu’s writing has long captivated readers with its sharp and sophisticated language, inviting them into a world that is both deeply personal and universally relatable. My admiration for his work began in the 1990s while I was still living in Brazil, where I eagerly read his books and his weekly column in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo. Years later, while living in the United States as a writer and literary translation student, I found myself drawn back to his stories. My reader’s perspective gained another deep layer when I started to understand his work from a translator’s standpoint and finally decided to embark on translating the stories from Estranhos Estrangeiros (Strange Foreigners). This posthumous collection had yet to reach Anglophone audiences. My appreciation for his meticulous word choices and narrative rhythm only grew. The sophisticated prose with its long, vibrant sentences, precise punctuation, and words that carry a specific meaning in Portuguese, presented exciting challenges to me.
One of the most compelling pieces I chose to translate from this collection is “Simulacrum of Imagerie,” which Abreu was working on before his untimely death from complications of HIV in 1996. This story stands out not only for its intricate exploration of foreignness and displacement but also for its relevance to contemporary discussions of identity, issues that are deeply present in my own work as a fiction writer. The title itself evokes Jean Baudrillard’s theory from Simulacra and Simulation, adding an intriguing layer about artificiality that resonates even more profoundly nowadays in our current world of false realities, the cult of celebrity, and social media.
Despite the relatable and universal themes, some aspects of Abreu’s text are deeply rooted in our native Brazilian Portuguese and became interesting challenges to translate. Punctuation, for example, was a big task I faced while working on this story. I wanted to preserve Abreu’s long, flowing paragraphs separated by commas, which are crucial for the narrative’s distinctive rhythm and voice in the original. In English, this approach is less common; the sentences can become confusing and finding a way to retain that musicality requires extensive experimentation. By analyzing the choice of words and their sounds in both languages, I was able to preserve the cadence of his prose. For instance, I carefully deliberated over phrases and sought synonyms that would echo the rhythm of the original. Ultimately, my commitment to honoring the poem-like quality of Abreu’s work guided many of my translation decisions. For example, when translating “Continuava o céu azul tão claro e raro naquela cidade odiosa,” I opted for “the blue sky remained so fair and rare in that hateful city.” This choice – instead of a more accurate synonym for claro (clear) – preserved the sonorous qualities of the original Portuguese, ensuring that the beauty of Abreu’s language was not lost.
Another significant aspect of my translation process involved the decision to retain certain foreign words. For example, the word “songamonga” (a Brazilian slang for a person who’s sly but pretends to be naïve) and “durazno” (peach in Spanish) were kept in the original language. The same applies to “Ausgang,” a German word meaning “exit” and used by the main character, a German translator, and “imagerie” in French, the original title’s word that conveys a particular sound, but also connects to Jean Baudrillard’s native French. I believe some foreign words enrich the narrative, bring out the voice, and contribute to the theme of cultural estrangement.
Conversely, translating words like “perneta” (one-legged girl in the English version) posed a challenge due to its slang connotation, which can be perceived as both lighthearted and potentially offensive. Equivalent words in English, such as stumpy, were much ruder and considered more offensive compared to the term in Portuguese. The right balance in tone while conveying a similar sentiment in English, required a thoughtful choice of idiom. I chose to use ‘one-legged,’ which doesn’t carry the same playful tone as it does in the original, but is not as strong as ‘stumpy’ or as clinical as ‘amputee.’ The satirical tone of the paragraph was carefully preserved to convey the sentiment that’s missing in the translated word.
As I reflect on the entire experience, it becomes clear that translating Caio Fernando Abreu was not only an immense privilege but has also deepened my appreciation for his literary genius. Each line invites readers to explore meanings on multiple levels, and through this most profound engagement, I have come to love his work even more. Connecting the threads of his narratives, I recognize the lasting impact of his voice and the universal themes that resonate across time, language, and culture.
Caio Fernando Abreu (1948-1996) is a Brazilian writer who continues to find new audiences around the world. He is one of the most influential writers of his generation, one of the first to speak candidly about drugs, AIDS, and homosexuality, and a sharp chronicler of urban Brazilian life between the 1960s and 1990s. Born in Porto Alegre, in the deep South of Brazil, Abreu lived in São Paulo for many years. Abreu wrote novels, short stories, and plays, and translated Susan Sontag, Sun Tzu, and Carson McCullers into Portuguese. He received critical literary prizes in Brazil, such as the Jabuti and APCA. He has been the subject of numerous literary theses, and some of his books and stories have also been translated into French, German, and other languages. At the time of his death, he was a celebrated columnist for the daily newspaper O Estado de São Paulo. Some of Abreu’s short stories have also been published in English, including “Sergeant Garcia,” “Beauty, a Terrible Story,” “Shit About Love,” and “Beyond the Point.” Photo by Adriana Franciosi.
Ines Rodrigues is a Brazilian writer, journalist, and translator in New York, and the author of the novel, Days of Bossa Nova. She holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia University and completed the Literary Translation at Columbia (LTAC) coursework. Her short fiction has appeared in The Plentitudes Journal, Tint Journal, and the Writers Read Anthology. She received a Word-for-Word translation grant from Columbia University in 2023. She translates from Portuguese and Italian into English. inesrodriguesauthor.com. Photo by Kristina Rathod.
The hardest thing was to decide. Pick up the phone, punch in the guy’s number, ask to use the pool. He always said yes, but first he wanted to know if she was sure. Soon she was getting out of a taxi and he, with Lucy on the leash, was coming to open the gate. The ritual lasted more than a year in an uneven cadence; she might “swim” three times a week or go two months without needing to. It didn’t matter that the water was always cold, or that it sometimes had an oily film on its surface, or even that she didn’t know how to swim. She contented herself with dog paddle, that deceitful refuge for those terrified of the sea.
Although its water was murky, the pool at Red Lounge was not the sea. Inés Morada knew that. Even if she was on the verge of drowning a number of times, she never lost her nerve. First, because drowning didn’t matter much to her, and second, because sitting in the shadows a few yards away, attentive to her breathing while pretending to pet Lucy, was the disgraced Cristiano Fairway. Once, on the first visit, she swam 15 feet without a problem before letting out a scream and thrashing around, as if something had snaked itself between her legs. Fairway dropped Lucy’s leash and in two bounds was at the side of the pool. There he found Inés talking to the culprit, someone who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t surprised. He’d always understood other men’s women. Without leaving the poolside, he watched her continue her arc from one end to the other. He didn’t leave, even when she got out of the water and told him the swim was great, even when she went for her purse, took out the agreed-upon sum, and paid him. His close attention was not unrelated to the fact that Inés always swam naked.
People doing strange things isn’t exactly news, and Fairway began to think of her visits as strangely normal. One time he put on music so her screams wouldn’t alarm anyone. While Red Lounge’s soundproofing made it unlikely, Fairway shuddered at the thought of being connected again with something unseemly, something that might have appeared like abuse or exploitation. In reality, it was the opposite, almost an act of charity. As he himself bragged to his friends, he charged her more than a taxi driver but less than a psychologist. He described to them her body and the snatches of “conversation” he could make out. “The girl is batshit,” was the verdict from his friends, men like him for whom the clock on the wall moved at too slow a pace. When they left, he’d gather the glasses, clean everything up, feed Lucy, and regret dismantling the security system that was in place when Red Lounge had actually been something: Now the footage would have been entertaining, or at least it would have filled the time. Maybe with a little money, thought Fairway. But the idea of rousing himself to “make” money wasn’t flattering anymore, not even to see up close on a TV screen the tantalizing figure of future prey. Why didn’t he film her with his cell phone, asked one of his friends, but a homemade approach was unappealing. And anyway, his cell phone didn’t have a video function.
As a result, his stories of her visits lost their vitality. Imagine it: She arrived, said hello, undressed, swam, screamed, got out, paid, dressed, left. There were erotic scenes in tasteless best-sellers with more substance than that—not to say Fairway had read them, because he hadn’t touched a book since high school, but the references were everywhere, just like Greek mythology. So one day he told them of a break in the routine. He’d noticed suddenly that she’d stopped swimming. She was no longer talking, no longer holding one of her dialogues. And the look on her face suggested the shooting agony of a cramp: Pain under the surface and its expression above. He dove in immediately (they interrupted to ask if he’d taken off his shoes: No) and he swore she weighed less than a feather pillow when he scooped her up and carried her from the pool. Completely oblivious to whatever medical intervention a cramp called for, he massaged her calves and thighs, bent and straightened her knees, and spoke to her in an almost hypnotic tone about things he no longer remembers.
His friends ask him the color of her pubic hair. Fairway offers more details, including one that could well-enough be true, given how democratic body aesthetics have become: She’s had laser hair removal almost everywhere. What remains floats in an enchanting wisp, and that night Fairway swims in the darkness without regard for Lucy’s barking.
With time, even the gasps, sighs, shouts, and swears that come from Inés Morada in the pool acquire for Fairway the form of a precise story, with imagined first and last names, places and times, estrangements, reconciliations, and, above all, yearning. The issue seems to be a fundamental failure to communicate with a man. The type of guy who behaves differently when they are horizontal and when they are vertical. But there are also likely job troubles—Inés works at a home for the elderly—general loneliness, a fear of getting old. In sum, your classic problems. Each time it’s as if she’s elaborating further, from amid the sloshing, filthy water, on the humiliation of being set aside and forgotten by a lover who vacations without her, who declines to answer her calls and stops buying her things; or on spending all day cleaning the messes of the elderly, people who were once beloved members of a family before they were shipped away. Cristiano Fairway begins to think he might be able to solve all her problems.
On another occasion she stops again in the middle of the pool, but this time she appears relaxed, floating on her back, her stark whiteness uninterrupted, her body barely making a ripple in the water around her. Fairway pretends he doesn’t notice what is happening and resumes petting Lucy. When she finishes, she lets herself sink down and then slowly bob back up, as if she’s touched the bottom, her hair all wet, resplendent in the few lights that still work. She gets out and her expression is a declaration of happiness and solitude. Fairway explains that, on this day, when she comes over to pay him, he can make out the gurgling of her stomach, as though she hasn’t eaten in days. He seizes on the opportunity to invite her to dinner. The table is set as if in the middle of a stage, the scenery for a romantic encounter hastily arranged. His friends ask him what happened next, but he is a tactician when it comes to sex, and also a gentleman, and he tells them that time is his friend, that nothing can be rushed. They give him a hard time, but secretly they envy Fairway’s patient anticipation of what’s to come.
Which doesn’t last long. Near the pool is a spiral staircase that leads up to a loft, and there Cristiano Fairway spends his nocturnal hours, usually sleeping, and sometimes having efficient—or, in other words, brief—sex that he doesn’t tell anyone about, more out of laziness than discretion. The bed has blue sheets and wheels on its base that aren’t locked into place, causing it to slide around. Inés christens it the “blue wave.” It’s almost the only thing she says. She doesn’t exactly stand out for her ability to make conversation, thinks Fairway. The friends want more details, because a story without details sounds like a lie, but he’s stingy, as if careful not to reveal the spoilers in a movie.
Late one night she asks for an emergency session, but he tells her there is another swimmer already interested. It isn’t true, but it could be. His friends agree that women need to be kept in line so that they don’t think they’re a bed of roses, the last Coca-Cola in the desert, Cinderella reincarnated. They use metaphors, analogies, clichés. Deep down they hope the episode won’t lead anywhere because they don’t want Fairway to experience things they have not. In any case, months pass before Inés Morada returns.
When she does, her hair is short and the dynamic has shifted. Now she wears a one-piece suit and a swim cap, and she’s learned how to swim. Fairway studies her impassively as she skillfully navigates the dark water littered with cigarette butts, empty beer cans, used condoms, and other sundry things whose stench climbs the spiral staircase like a creeping predator. She no longer screams or speaks out loud whatever it is that torments her. In fact, her expression appears to be one of utter calm, although, of course, that could be an act. The stories Fairway relays take on a different tone. They have an edge now. He tells them how he blindfolded her and tied her to the bedpost, hitting her until she begged. His friends guffaw as they down booze in front of Lucy’s listless eyes, the early symptoms of a fast-moving and fatal cancer of the snout already blooming inside her, a disease Cristiano Fairway will fail to detect until it is too late.
Months later, one of his friends offers to pay Fairway to let him spy on Inés. Fairway explains that she doesn’t swim naked anymore, that the arrangement has lost some of its original luster, but the friend insists. Curbing the folly of others has never been a virtue of Fairway’s, and so he doubles the price and doesn’t ask any further questions. His only condition is that the friend not film her. He isn’t going to expose a young and respectable woman to public derision, and, anyway, he’s begun to grow at least a little fond of her.
The friend hides himself behind a column where none of the remaining lights—angled toward the water—shine. He eyes her hips and her ass with Fairway’s many tales in mind, and he watches as she takes off her neoprene cap with the same agonizing deliberateness with which a whore removes a glove. For the next visit, another friend offers to double the fee again. He’s someone Fairway barely knows, with a split lip and shifty eyes. He lights a cigar when she climbs the stairs to the loft and he smokes it the whole time she’s in the shower scrubbing off the pool’s terrible stench of death. Fairway manages to get the guy to leave before she comes back down, and when he accompanies her to the taxi he advises her not to come back.
But she doesn’t listen. Need is always inexplicable.
In time, all of them are spying on her. Although they are hardened types, not quite bad men but not good either, raised in the school of macho superiority and yet softened by failure, they still can’t figure out why a girl like that would swim in shit, be it existential anguish, private drama, or heartbreak. They are aroused by the contrast between the shining and serene moment when she undresses and dons her cap and the instant when she gets out, wearing a new layer of filth that seems to make her proud. Sometimes they hear her chat a while with Fairway before going up to shower, and from the gentle, submissive tone she uses, they have to admit she seems crazy about him. Why else would she swim in these conditions, or flaunt herself so that she might be spied upon by men like them? Why else would she pay? He has stopped telling them the stories, but every once in a while he lets on that they are still having sex.
On the last day of autumn, Inés arrives by bus, and for the first time she is late. This causes Fairway, freshly bathed and cologned, to do something he has never done before: consult his watch. On this night she didn’t ask to come; it was Fairway who called her, as if arranging a romantic date. He employed—like he was borrowing from some kind of dating manual—an arsenal of seduction: compliments, attention, availability. She arrived just as night was falling. As usual, the neon sign that bore the words Red Lounge hung from its dilapidated mount. There had been an era of splendor, and Fairway had been there then, too, just as he was here now. The abandoned facility was flanked by a God is Love temple and a business that sold and rented photocopiers. Before entering, Inés stopped to look at the three establishments together and decided they were one and the same. She rang the bell with characteristic delicacy and waited.
The week prior, Fairway’s friends had helped him over long hours. Cleaning the pool was the man with the split lip’s idea, and while his intentions couldn’t have been good, the presence of the other two—Denis and Olivera—had reassured Fairway that things would work out. Now all the lights around the pool were lit (Denis had been in charge of electrical); they illuminated brilliant blue-green water, colored by newly gleaming tiles that adorned what had once been a playground for the rich. The men had emptied the pool in just one day, but cleaning and filling it had taken several. Some of the things uncovered at the bottom they had seized like the spoils of war—objects that had played a role in countless nights of revelry, symbols of decadence, symbols of promises and hopes in which many people had invested what they did not have. Faced with each salvaged discovery, Fairway looked away, as if none of the dripping items meant anything more than a cadaver. A lot of people came through here, was all he said. Cleaning the grime off the walls and removing a sticky green substance took hours and gallons of water and was only possible thanks to the physical strength of Olivera, a one-time boxer now retired and forgotten.
Inés Morada looked at the pool but said nothing. She barely smiled.
Fairway asked her if she wanted to swim. Before answering she took in the entire venue—the columns, the seats, the terrace where Lucy usually sat (she didn’t ask where she was), the staircase to the loft. She said she hadn’t come ready to swim. No one was there except for them, Fairway said, a statement that is always false because people are never truly alone. He suggested she swim naked if she wanted, now that the water was clean. Inés sighed. She usually swam when she was at her most distressed: the cleanliness of the water had never mattered to her, she told him, and now she didn’t need to swim there anymore. When Fairway asked her if she was swimming somewhere else, she replied that there were plenty of pools to go around, but said nothing more. Fairway had prepared a spread of charcuterie and cheese and had opened a bottle of white wine. Before they could begin to eat, the bell rang again.
It was Olivera. He was holding a strawberry cake, and his arrival didn’t seem planned, but nor did it seem exactly unplanned either. Fairway let him pass and then introduced the two of them. Perhaps because after his boxing career he’d been a bouncer in a series of places like Red Lounge, Olivera had a way of looking at women, a look that was at once protective and disdainful, a gaze accentuated by the size of his body, which was not small, and the vitality of his soul, which was mostly vacant. Inés withstood his gaze throughout the interrogation, answering questions about whether she’d ever been married, if she had children, who she lived with, what she did for work. Olivera’s senile mother was in a geriatric facility, it turned out, but not the one where Inés worked.
They had just toasted when Denis showed up. He brought low-fat ice cream. Maybe he was nervous, or on something, because as soon as he sat down he knocked over a glass. Olivera and Fairway didn’t budge, but Inés reached for a napkin to help him clean himself. Maybe it was also on account of his nerves that Denis reached out and grabbed her hand and held it for a moment, long enough for Inés to feign an embarrassment she did not feel. Fairway looked at her steadily with his lips pursed, as if recognizing a game of chess unfolding before him.
During dinner, which passed amiably, with snatches of old boleros floating down from the loft, they spoke about the situation of the country, the general deterioration of things, the latest movies at the theater. A second bottle of wine was uncorked. Inés wanted to talk about a French film she’d seen with a friend about a long-time marriage that begins to fall apart after the wife suffers a stroke—but none of the men had seen it nor cared to. They laughed like children when she asked if they weren’t afraid that something like that might happen to them. Well, it isn’t going to happen tonight, said Fairway, touching her knee underneath the table. With the desserts they opened a third bottle.
By then the friend with the split lip had arrived, without ringing the bell or bringing anything, smelling like tar and other substances. He greeted the men with a handshake and kissed Inés’ hand, just as ladies and gentlemen did in those classic films where one could smoke cigarettes without any guilt. He even gave a bow, which she acknowledged with a courtesan’s smile. She was beginning to realize that, yes, she did want to swim, even with a stomach full of dinner and alcohol, even without her suit and cap—because she said she hadn’t come prepared—even in a pool that was now disgustingly aseptic and false. She felt a pulse of nausea when she stood, but the sound of scraping chairs behind her meant they were watching over her, that they wouldn’t let her fall if she slipped on tiles that were now immaculately clean.
First she takes off her gray jacket. It is a gift from many years before—she no longer remembers from whom, even though it was a good present, now missing a button. Next she unbuttons her white blouse, purchased days earlier at the flea market and not terribly well made—some threads hang loose—but serviceable. She’s standing with her back to them. She swears she hears religious chants from the temple next door, but that’s impossible because Red Lounge is soundproofed, from the outside in and from the inside out. Cristiano Fairway watches inexpressively as she removes the black corduroy skirt he’s taken off so many times. Next, the white lace bra, the kind that opens in the front with a silver fastener that leaves a red mark on the skin. The same kind of lace is on her thong, held fast by nylons. While she bends down to undo her boots she glances toward the water; it’s rippling in a wind that’s coming from somewhere, and it seems to her just like a blue wave. She has to admit that the men have done a remarkable job.
She feels cold. For a second she thinks about turning around and looking back at all of them and maybe changing her fate. But she knows she would only be able to look at Fairway, and she also knows that their glance would be intersected and interrupted by the eyes of the others. She enters the water.
Translator’s Note:
“Not every writer has a voice that distinguishes them from everyone else,” Uruguayan essayist and literary critic Alicia Torres has said. “But [Mercedes] Estramil does.”
An imperative in translating Mercedes’ work is conveying its strange internal logic—there’s a quickening sense of momentum that is both hard to explain yet utterly compelling. Mercedes has said that her writing seeks out the darker parts of human nature because she finds them more honest and worthy of exploration than the lighter parts, which are often just for show: “There is nothing more twisted than the human mind,” she says, “and literary characters, even the most complex, rarely even scratch the surface.”
I find it useful to zoom in and examine specific choices, keeping in mind, of course, that the act of translation requires thousands of such choices over the course of a short story. For this piece, the original title is half in English, half in Spanish: “Red Lounge, Patineta Azul,” which literally translates to “Red Lounge, Blue Skateboard.” Taken on its own terms, it is a comparison of two things that appear not to go together, both the objects themselves and the languages employed. There is tension in the title, contrast, enigma. It’s a structure Mercedes also used for the title of her latest short story collection, Espinos blancos, fiestas privadas, (White Hawthorns, Private Parties). Why do these seemingly disparate things go together? What do they represent? We are compelled to read on to find out.
But in translating the title of this story, I hit a road block: In Spanish, “patineta” is a lovely word; in English, “skateboard” is discordant and harsh-sounding. I considered titling the story just “Red Lounge”, but that would have lost the vivid contrast in the title that I found beguiling as a reader. Could I swap “skateboard” out for something else? Complicating matters was the fact that the title came from a specific moment in the story, when Inés compares Fairway’s bed, with its sliding wheels, to a blue skateboard. Again, at the end of the story, she invokes the memory of the bed, claiming that the newly cleaned pool also “seems to her just like a blue skateboard”. If I wanted to replace it, the new word needed to work both in the context of the moving bed and the immaculately glowing pool. When I came up with an idea, I ran it past Mercedes. Changing a title, after all, is a big decision. As always, Mercedes was open, thoughtful, and excited about the change and its interpretations by a new audience of readers. We agreed on “Red Lounge, Blue Wave”.
Reading about the dark side of human nature can be arduous, but Mercedes’ work never feels heavy or overly foreboding. In this short story, Mercedes allows glimpses of the characters’ humanity to come through. The writing itself pulses with life. And that’s what most draws me to Mercedes’ writing: its essential buoyancy.
Mercedes Estramil is an Uruguayan writer and critic. She is the author of five novels and three short story collections, including the recently released Espinos blancos, fiestas privadas (2024) [White Hawthorns, Private Parties]. Her novel Rojo (1996) was named winner of the Premio Narradores de la Banda Oriental, and her novel Mordida (2019) won Uruguay’s Premio Nacional de Literatura. Translations of Estramil’s short fiction have recently appeared in English for the first time in Gulf Coast and The Adroit Journal. Estramil was born and lives in Montevideo.
Travis Price is a translator and writer of fiction whose work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Malahat Review, Hobart, Wigleaf, and other publications. After completing a Fulbright in Uruguay in 2018, Price has become one of the primary translators bringing contemporary Uruguayan fiction to English-speaking audiences today. He also co-founded the literary workshops North Island and Los Matemates. Price lives in Philadelphia. You can find him at travisprice.net.
Three Translations from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Uncollected Poems, July 2025
Forget, forget, and leave us with just this now, experience the stars clearing through, penetrating the night sky; like the moon the garden’s fully transcended. We’ve been feeling for a long time how it becomes more reflective in the dark, arising like a gleam, a radiant white shadow but now leave us alone, we’re crossing over into a world which is lunar—
Paris, early summer, 1909
O the curves of my longing through the universe, and on every stroke: my being’s outward flung. Some things not returning before a thousand years on the swaying ellipse of their momentum passing. Rushing through the future that once was, recognizing itself in the seasons or airily, as a precise influence almost starlike in the restless apparatus trembling momentarily.
Venice, mid-July 1912
You from the start, lost love, you, who never arrived, I don’t know what sounds are precious to you. No longer do I try, when the moment arises, to recognize you. All the immense images within me, landscape seen in the distance, cities and towers and bridges and un- suspected turn of events and the mighty of those gods who once traversed countries: all rising to one meaning within me: you, runaway.
Oh, you are the gardens, oh, I saw them with such desire. An open window in the country house—and you almost stepped forward towards me mystified. I found alleys,— you had just walked them, and the mirrors sometimes of the merchants’ shops were still dizzy with you and, frightened, mimicked my abrupt reflection.—Who knows whether the same bird didn’t call through both of us yesterday, separately, in the evening?
(Paris, winter 1913-14)
Translator’s Note:
I happened to find a copy of Edward Snow’s translation of Rilke, entitled The Poetry of Rilke, on the bottom shelf of a book stall at The New England Antique Mall, in Quechee, Vermont, a few years ago. Intuitively, I was drawn to it. It is a suitcase of a book, containing most of what Rilke wrote, excluding, perhaps, the French poems. As I mentioned to my spouse, Tevis, who encouraged me to buy it, I offered, “This just might be of use someday.”
I translated several dozen of these poems in the summer of 2024. I didn’t think I would translate anymore Rilke, until I picked up the Edgar Snow again, and began to read the ones I hadn’t translated, then decided to translate the ones that attracted me the most, since my versions were different than Snow’s. That sounds brazen but when an author’s voice enters into the translator’s blood and psyche it is impossible to put a stop to the hard work that follows: finding the balance between how you hear the author’s voice and how closely you can follow the author’s intent, the language that the author intended the reader for their understanding and what that understanding was meant to be.
The three poems I gathered for ANMLY were intuitively grouped by the trope of astronomy, of the stars. Each mention Rilke’s gravitation (pun intended) of heavenly bodies, how he rides that as a theme, how he allows the radiance of the heavens shine through him in undeniable Rilkean ways. We cross “over into a world/ which is lunar” in “Forget, forget,” written in 1909, and whenever I revisit the poem I actually feel myself brought along with Rilke into that eerie but sacred light.
In “O the curves on my longing,” the future as “apparatus” is mysteriously attractive to me. For it to become “a precise influence/ almost starlike” frames the unframeable, and for it to “tremble momentarily” references the human response when we think we believe we’ve just thought to see a star “trembling,” not unlike us when in the presence of divine splendor.
Perhaps “You, from the start,” nailed me from the beginning because I wrote a love poem two decades ago to Tevis regarding the sense of divinity I believe we shared in due to both of us hearing the same bird (in nature on a trail and at least in the poem), and was magnetized by the way Rilke uses reflection throughout the entire poem. We see mirrors and see the reflections of them. We look backwards in time and see forward to the present: Rilkean tautology at its alchemical best.
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Rilke is appreciated as one of the most lyrical German-language poets. He wrote one novel in lyrical prose, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge), but mostly wrote verse, although he is also known for his several collections of his voluminous correspondence. Rilke’s work is often considered to be mystical, and his imagery often focuses on the challenge of being in communion with the ineffable—especially in what W. H. Auden termed “the age of anxiety.”
Wally Swist’s books include Aperture (Kelsay Books), poems regarding caregiving his spouse through Alzheimer’s, and If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press). Poems, essays, and translations appear in Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Healing Muse, Montreal Review, Poetry London, Rattle, and Your Impossible Voice. Wild Rose Bush: The Life of Mary and Other Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke was selected as an honorable mention in the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Prize for Excellence in Translation (Green Linden Press). Bainbridge Island Press will publish his newest collection of poetry, Discovering What to Say.
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