the spot I’m from the lot where wounds bloom to pry open space
voice clenched inside the stone and waiting for fresh water my wind slinks out of the tree to delta into vertigos how can I arrive at different rivers what weather can I yank the stitch of rain out of for my land
north-large-whole south-little-hole noise-that-matters voice-in-tatters piddling class crossed this world that’s hacked into nations have cut my paws to chuck
homeland I’ve looked for you with no luck I’ll have to invent you you rattle my arteries are more present than the spliff at my lip warmer than the lover against my skin but the world walls up shudders won’t raise the gate of your residence for me
neither more nor less advanced in equal step with humanity my country won’t reach the heights of the grand powers but will share its ladder red bird rage-lark there will be blue sky for a river fresh cry for a mouth a white season for weapons I will be born in this country bulrush-ministry parliament-of-mourning-doves
pays mien
du point je suis d’où fleurissent plaies à fracturer l’espace
voix fermée dans la pierre en attente d’eau fraîche mon vent se détache de l’arbre pour ramifier vertiges comment atteindre d’autres fleuves de quel temps extraire pluie pour ma terre
nord-grand-entier sud-petit-tiers bruit-qui-compte voix-sous-bottes basse moyenne ai traversé monde que voici taillé en pays me suis coupé les pattes
pays mien je te cherche en vain il faut t’inventer tu secoues mes artères plus présent que le chanvre à ma lèvre plus chaud que l’amoureuse contre ma peau mais le monde mur autour des convulsions me refuse où te domicilier
ni plus avancé ni moins avancé à pas égal avec l’humain mon pays n’ira pas aux sommets des grandes puissances mais partagera sons échelle oiseau rouge rage-allumette ce sera bleu ciel pour rive cri frais pour bouche saison blanche pour les armes je naîtrai dans ce pays ministère-roseau parlement-tourterelle
branch
deadended clouds the frail dolls of morning latch on to the airlift
each dive drops the heart back into its childhood what branch shudders so ecstatically a wing will not devour it
oblivion the hanger I hang the flags from so I can offer the alms of my hand
behind each being a sheet glows here I am without markings the sea is no mast
cyclonic gown footing slipshod in your floods in your rains I remain dry what a revel if I open my window it’s because you are a pledge
branche
nuages en impasse poupées frêles les matins s’attachent à la fuite
toute chute ramène le cœur à son enfance quelle branche jouit si folle une aile ne la dévore
oubli cintre où j’accroche drapeaux pour donner ma main en offrande
derrière chaque être luit une voile me voici sans empreinte la mer n’est pas un poteau
robe au cyclone perdre pied dans vos déluges dans vos pluies m’étancher quelle fête si j’ouvre ma fenêtre c’est que vous êtes une promesse
am I poor
burned up, my newborn blood grew up inside a lack limb too much for the body to lift
my mother chopped down sugarcane bum harvest for the History that played dumb in the scholarly account
my flesh still mulls the slash the historian filed away in the void
nowadays am I poor don’t reach for your abacus
every tax to keep me quiet settled my shame fully paid up and I’ve still got a couple gobs to lob into the brimming evening of your capital
suis-je pauvre
brûlé mon sang nouveau-né ai grandi dans le manque membre trop lourd pour le corps
ma mère a coupé la canne à sucre nulle récolte pour l’Histoire foutue muette dans le conte scolaire
ma chair rumine encore l’amer que l’historien a archivé dans l’oubli
maintenant suis-je pauvre n’attrape pas ta machine à calculer
acquittée toute taxe de me taire dépensée ma honte il me reste ces quelques crachats à jeter dans la nuit pleine de ton capital
finished off
coming for the lack coming in pieces hyphen closing the road murk-made animal coming for sleep throat slashed deep
sown in rafts at my feet a strait the tributary limps into my head the fogs skirt past bowed the word grows brittle the next step dust the gardens darkness locks belong to me I’m on my way to be finished off in daylight
achevé
viendrai pour l’absence viendrai cassé trait à fermer route animal ténèbre viendrai au sommeil gorge décapitée
semée en radeaux à mes pieds étroitesse où s’épuise branche contournent ma tête les brumes arqué le mot s’effrite poussière prochain pas à moi jardins clos par l’opacité je viendrai achevé au jour
These four translations come from Jean D’Amérique’s third collection of poems, Atelier du silence or The Workshop of Silence. D’Amérique is a prolific writer with an exceptionally well-tuned ear (honed by his early years in the slam poetry scene) and a rigorous and unflinching moral outlook. It would be an oversimplification to say that his poems are about Haiti, the nation of his birth and upbringing, and the political, economic, and cultural situation therein, but it would be a disservice to pretend they are not deeply concerned with it. When we see a poem like “homeland,” where the speaker has to “invent” where he is actually from, a poem that makes a government out of the natural elements and beauty that surround him, we come close to understanding the aspect of Haiti that animate him—the land itself, the origins of its songs and sounds and scents: bulrushes, larks, mourning doves.
In D’Amérique’s poetry, there is a dexterous ambivalence towards what others tend to take for granted—the kind of ambivalence that allows poetry to flourish. A nation, D’Amérique tells us, isn’t just its government, nor is it only its people. A language isn’t a simple tool but one inflected with history and still spattered with blood and injustice, as well as a material to be melted down, recast, wielded in new and surprising ways. The subject matter here is heavy—poverty, natural disaster, the first country to truly abolish slavery being shoved off the world stage for centuries—though the poems themselves are often unassuming and small on the page; we might go so far as to say that this is a kind of formal imitation of the nation’s geographic size and outsized historical/experiential weight.
But just as Haiti is more than its history and its geopolitical status, and just as D’Amérique is more than his passport, these poems bristle with surplus—consonance and puns, tenderness and anger, meditations on the nature of poetry and music and scathing indictments of regimes. His poetry abounds, and in its abundance resists the kinds of shortsighted, divisive categorizations that seek to reduce the world’s complexity so it can be more easily fenced.
Born in Haiti in 1994, Jean D’Amérique is a prize-winning poet, playwright, and novelist who splits his time between Paris, Brussels, and Port-au-Prince. He has published several collections of poetry: Petite fleur du ghetto (Atelier Jeudi Soir), Nul chemin dans la peau que saignante étreinte (Cheyne), Atelier du silence (Cheyne); and Rhapsodie rouge (Cheyne). Author of several plays, he has received the Prix Jean-Jacques Lerrant des Journées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre for Cathédrale des cochons (éditions Théâtrales) and the 2021 Prix RFI Théâtre for Opéra poussière. His first novel, Soleil à coudre, is out now from Actes Sud.
Conor Bracken is a poet and translator. He is the author of Henry Kissinger, Mon Amour (Bull City Press) and The Enemy of My Enemy is Me (Diode Editions), and the translator of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Scorpionic Sun (CSU Poetry Center) and Jean D’Amérique’s forthcoming No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace (Ugly Duckling Presse). He lives near Cleveland, Ohio. Translator photo by Lupita Eyde-Tucker.
As they did at around four o’clock every Sunday, the brass band was setting up for a performance in the town park. Pauline Chartreux packed the chairs tightly just beside the pavilion, where nothing impeded the sun’s rays; no need to set them under the black locust trees for shade on this cool April afternoon.
“What a glorious spring day!” said Madame Socovic, handing her a coin. “It was about time we saw some nice weather again.”
The attendant mumbled only a vague pleasantry in response, for a stranger had caught her attention: an amiable-looking man in his forties, tall and thin, with dark hair. You could see in his eyes that he was compassionate and curious about his surroundings. He wore a well-tailored suit and stylish shoes.
Mayor Bergeron stood on the podium in his capacity as bandleader, whispering last-minute reminders to the musicians. By now nearly all the chairs were occupied, and people were turning around to comment on each other’s clothing and share their news.
Pauline Chartreux observed the newcomer out of the corner of her eye. She wondered what he might be after.
The mayor’s wife arrived, in a muslin dress that was too lightweight for the season, and took her seat beside Madame Socovic. Her husband raised his right hand, as though her arrival were all he’d been waiting for, and the band launched into “Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka.”
The stranger, who had been leaning against a tree trunk, now walked slowly around the pavilion. He looked to be in shock, but the attendant couldn’t imagine why; she saw nothing out of the ordinary about the concert or the audience. He came up to her, handed her a coin, and took a seat.
Pauline Chartreux sat down well behind the audience and crossed her hands over her belly, like a shepherdess minding her flock. The musicians performed fifteen pieces or so—an indiscriminate mix of classical repertoire, military marches, and recent pop tunes.
After the concert she started folding up the chairs. She noticed the stranger, still glued to his seat, keenly eyeing the musicians as they put away their instruments.
“Did you enjoy the concert, sir?” she called out to him. “The band is good, don’t you think?”
As if waking from a dream, the man said, “Beg your pardon? Oh, yes, of course. Do they play often?”
“Every Sunday. Other musicians play here sometimes, too. On Saturdays. Next week we’ll have a folk group from Limousin.”
But the man’s mind was clearly elsewhere. Smack in the middle of her sentence, he wished Madame Chartreux a pleasant day and left the park.
She saw him again every afternoon that week, scrutinizing the passersby for an hour or two. At the pharmacy one morning, she learned that he was a doctor by the name of Daniel Pile and that he’d just taken over a local practice upon the previous doctor’s retirement.
That Saturday, he arrived right on time for the folk music show. The audience took up only three rows and consisted mostly of young moms and little kids. As the performers began singing and dancing, the attendant observed Dr. Pile glaring at the audience members with evident annoyance. He got up and left during the second song.
*
As he walked briskly to the back of the park, Daniel Pile was thinking about the four patients who had come to see him that morning, making this his busiest day yet. Either all the local residents were in excellent health or they were reluctant to trust a doctor who was new in town. Maybe he ought to leave and start over somewhere else.
Pile noticed a man near the swan pond, dressed in blue, with an even, expressionless face. He started up a conversation and observed the man as they discussed the weather forecast and the bakers’ strike. His mouth moved only to let words out; it didn’t budge otherwise, neither to smile nor to frown. His eyes were a blank page. There wasn’t a wrinkle on his face, even though his gray hair suggested he was a man of a certain age. The doctor wanted to touch the man’s unlined cheeks but couldn’t think of any pretext to do so. Four of the musicians from the brass band in the town park, whom he’d initially taken for brothers, had that same face—featureless and free of scars or, indeed, of any distinguishing features whatsoever. And in the audience at the previous Sunday’s concert, Pile had spotted a half-dozen people suffering from the same anomaly.
Night was starting to fall; he thought it was time to go home. Then he saw a young woman approaching, her stride constricted to baby steps due to the tightness of her long green dress. Her straight brown bangs were long enough to cover her eyebrows, which made her look rather peculiar. She was making her way down the path, vigorously shaking a soda can. She stopped near the puppet theater and seemed to be looking for someone. Her gaze rested for a moment on Daniel Pile before settling on a red-haired young man sprawled on a bench. Affecting an inscrutable pout, she headed resolutely toward him across the park. Out of curiosity, the doctor followed her. The brunette held the can in her right hand, behind her back, and kept shaking it.
An old man was sitting at the foot of a sycamore tree. Beneath the brim of his off-white canvas cap, his face simply radiated impishness. Daniel Pile had a soft spot for faces like his, creased with the vestiges of childhood laughter. The old man looked up calmly at the woman, who was holding the soda can out to him.
“Could you help me? I have tendinitis and I can’t get this can open.”
He smiled and pulled the tab. The soda shot out of the can and splashed all over his face. The old man closed his eyes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” the woman cried. “I must have jostled it too much. Here, I’ll dry you off.”
A white towel appeared in her hand. She unfolded it and placed it over the old man’s face. With her fingertips she traced the curve of his eyebrows, his eye sockets and cheeks, his nose and mouth and chin; she swept her fingers across his forehead. And then she gathered together the corners of the fabric, which remained stiff and rounded. She walked away, apologizing once again, upon which the man replied that the pleasure was all his.
Daniel Pile looked at the old man’s face and was astonished by what he saw: not a single feature, no expression whatsoever. It would be impossible to guess his age. The charming air of mischief he’d had just moments before was gone. There was nothing left of him on which to pin a description, aside from his notably large ears.
Pile went up to him and said, “I saw what just happened to you, sir. I’m a doctor. How are you feeling?”
“Very well,” the man said, showing neither surprise nor interest. “No big deal, just a few drops of soda.”
“But what about your face?”
“What, are you afraid the sugar will attract wasps?”
Up close, the doctor couldn’t see a single hair or pore on the man’s face, nor even the tiniest of capillaries. The face was human, but it was as though it were covered with a taut layer of soft silk. The old man left, taking tiny steps, and Pile followed behind him. The park was about to close; security guards on mopeds were chugging along on the paths, asking folks to leave.
In the weeks that followed, Dr. Pile returned frequently, bringing books and medical journals with him. He exchanged pleasantries with the attendant, then spent long hours sitting on a bench near the main entrance. Now and then he saw featureless beings pass by. Aside from a few clues as to their age, gender, and (in some cases) occupation, there was no telling them apart.
It took three weeks of waiting, but finally he saw the young brunette again. This time she was wearing a white tulle skirt and a long yellow tunic. Holding a soda can, she walked past the doctor without so much as a glance in his direction. No one would call her a beauty—her nose was a bit too prominent for that!—but her eyes were distinctive enough to compensate. She took the circular path alongside the swan pond. A woman in her fifties, knitting in the shade of a linden tree, looked up at the sound of someone approaching. Her pink complexion was a perfect match for the yarn she was using. The strange brunette held out the soda, pointed to her right hand, and said she couldn’t open it.
Pile hurried over. “Allow me,” he said, grabbing the metal cylinder.
The young woman looked at him, first with surprise, then with rage. Without breaking eye contact, he slid his index finger over the tab.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “why don’t we have a soda together, at the café across the street?”
Sitting in the sun outside Le Caboulot, the stranger seemed more wary than aggrieved as Daniel Pile explained who he was and how things had gone for his first few months in town. Her name was Alice Lespovy, she told him, and she’d always lived in the neighborhood. She’d gotten married young, to a piano teacher. He’d disappeared two years later, never to be heard from again.
Upon hearing the word “piano,” Pile took a harmonica from his jacket pocket. He put it to his lips and played a few muted notes. Alice’s eyes went misty.
“Stop. Please stop. I hate the harmonica.”
He immediately put the instrument away.
“My father was a country doctor,” he said. “He’s the one who taught me music.”
She quickly pulled herself together and said, “You followed in his footsteps, then?”
“I was a florist first, then an insurance underwriter. It wasn’t until my wife and son died that I took an interest in healing people. That’s when I enrolled in medical school.”
Silence.
Alice was starting to stand up when Daniel Pile asked her, “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. You wipe your victims’ faces and take them with you.”
She snickered. “My ‘victims’! That’s a bit much. I don’t hurt them. And I certainly don’t ‘take their faces’! They still have all their human characteristics: a nose, a mouth, a pair of eyes—”
“But not what matters. Not what makes them unique, what makes them distinctive. I’ve spoken with several of them. It’s not just that blank mask they all wear; their minds are empty too. They take no interest in anything. They come and go, they work and eat and keep busy, but they have no emotions.”
“And don’t you think they’re happier that way, Dr. Pile?” she said, emphasizing his title.
“What’s your goal?”
She shifted her weight and nibbled on her lower lip.
“Come along with me, Daniel. You’ll understand.”
They climbed Trois Grenadiers hill, up toward the water tower. Pile took the young woman’s hand. She didn’t pull away, but her smile was noncommittal. She led him to a cul-de-sac and opened a gate, revealing an elegant stone house surrounded by high walls. They entered, walked through a dark passageway, and came out again through another door. To Pile, it seemed like he was back where he’d started. In the middle of the yard was a band pavilion. Several musicians had already taken their places; some audience members were seated as well, patiently awaiting the start of the concert. A bit farther away was the cabin where Madame Chartreux stored her chairs. The doctor went up to an old lady in a purple dress—or, rather, a mannequin dressed in purple. Her face was wrinkled to perfection. Daniel touched it with his fingertips and found it warm and alive. Then he spotted the man with the off-white cap, the one whose features he’d watched Alice steal. There was a wax figure of a standing woman, dressed like the park attendant, but her face was just a smooth mass.
“That’s right,” Alice said. “Madame Chartreux is one of my clients.”
While they drank tea together on the veranda, Pile’s curiosity got the better of him.
“On a technical level, how do you do it?”
She threw her head back and burst out laughing.
“What, you really think I’m going to tell you?”
“That towel you use to take away your so-called clients’ features—it must be soaked in some kind of substance. You could tell me that much, at least.”
“It’s a family secret. My mother was a chemist; I can’t say any more about it. But there’s no greater mystery about it than there is in, say, photography.”
“But why—”
“Shut up and kiss me, Daniel. I’m dying for you to kiss me.”
*
Pile got used to seeing the wax figures installed in the garden. Sometimes he even helped his girlfriend freshen them up. They were sheltered by an electric tarp that automatically unfurled at the first hint of rain, but even so, they took a beating from exposure to the wind. There were leaves to pick off of them and dust to remove from their clothing; their hair needed primping now and then. Madame Chartreux’s double still hadn’t gotten her human face. The attendant had twice refused to open Alice’s soda can, on the grounds that “those chemical drinks are bad for your health.” Daniel Pile thought she might be smarter than she looked. Joining the crowd around the pavilion were Madame Socovic, the watchmaker, and the hairdresser, and two musicians had joined their colleagues on the bandstand.
*
The first time Alice went to the little house behind the town hall, Daniel Pile showed her around his living quarters, the examining room, and even the cellar.
“And what’s in there?” she asked, pointing to a door next to Daniel’s bedroom.
“My butterfly collection.”
“Show me.”
He took a key from his pocket and opened the door. This small, square room with the shutters drawn housed the most stunning butterfly specimens Alice had ever seen. They were arranged by color. To her right were the blues, ranging from lightest to darkest, followed by the purples and pinks; to her left, yellows and oranges, greens and browns. In the center were blood-red and black butterflies, one of them a giant. There were only a few white butterflies, but their wings had a satiny sheen. Alice expected the labels beneath each specimen to be in Latin, but instead there was a first name, followed by an initial and a date.
“Why do you give them names?”
“Why do you put real faces on your wax figures?”
In a display case near the door were two magnificent butterflies. One was a tiny specimen, pale green with glints of white; the larger one was midnight blue with specks of gold.
“Why are they kept separate from the rest?”
“They’re the first two I caught. A special souvenir.”
“Where do you catch them? In East Asia? There are no butterflies around here with such gorgeous coloring.”
“Oh, they’re around,” Pile said breezily, “if you know where to look.”
On her way home, she stopped by the town park and asked the attendant her opinion of Daniel Pile.
“Is he a good doctor? What are people saying about him?”
“That he’s trustworthy enough,” Pauline Chartreux told her, “if you’ve got the flu or a nail infection. But apparently he has some awfully strange methods when it comes to caring for the dying. He insists on staying with them, alone, and playing music for them right up to the end. But, hey, maybe that helps them get to the other side!”
*
Daniel was more tender toward Alice here at his house, more relaxed than he was at hers, where he was always afraid he’d fall asleep and she’d take advantage of the opportunity to steal his face. In his own home, though, he felt secure. One day he told her as much.
“Don’t worry,” she said with a laugh. “Your face is of no interest to me. You haven’t been living here long enough.”
He understood then that she was in it for revenge.
“Nobody in town seems surprised to see well-known people suddenly walk around with blank faces. Don’t you find that odd, Alice? And why no reaction from the families of the faceless?”
“You don’t know them, Daniel. We live among apathetic people. Lacking in intelligence, if you ask me. It’s like they’re all bathed in blissful, self-satisfied ignorance. Before and after my treatment, there’s hardly any difference.”
Pile had noticed this phenomenon before. This place had no character to speak of; the town planning was vague at best, and the population was chockablock with morons.
*
One evening he returned home to find Alice standing at his door, shivering in the light drizzle.
“I’ve been here for an hour,” she complained. “Where were you?”
“With one of your ‘clients,’ as you put it. Monsieur Granier. He just died.”
She followed him into the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of wine.
“Are you in a bad mood because you couldn’t save him?”
“He didn’t have a butterfly!” he blurted. “Just like last week, with Madame Leplat. This maddening compulsion of yours is impeding my work.”
Alice asked him what he meant, but he demanded she leave.
By the time Alice returned the next day, he was in a better mood and treated her with kindness. After they made love, she asked him, “What do you play for your patients who are, you know, transitioning? Are we talking ‘Camptown Races’ or ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee?’”
He took his harmonica from his jacket pocket and put it to his lips. A melancholy tune filled the room. Alice ran, screaming, out to the hallway, her eyes wild and her hands pressed flat against her ears. He caught up to her in the living room and held her close.
“What are you afraid of? You think the tune kills off everyone who hears it? If that were the case, I’d have kicked the bucket long ago.”
“You know I hate the harmonica. It sends shivers down my spine. The very thought of you playing it at moments like those . . .”
Later, while making coffee for her, he began to tell his story.
“It was nighttime. We were driving back from Italy. My wife and my son were asleep. It was raining. I don’t remember what happened. When I opened my eyes, the car was in a ravine. A tree had broken its fall. I managed to make my way out. My leg was injured. My wife and Frédéric had been ejected from the car. They were lying farther down the hill, a few yards apart. I crawled down to them. We were on a mountain road; I had no chance of getting help for them in time. I instinctively took out my harmonica and played them the tune you heard earlier, to comfort them. I don’t know who wrote it, but my father used to play it for me when I was sick. He said he’d learned it from a fairy. Frédéric died right away, with his head on my knees, illuminated by a headlight from our car. That’s when I saw something emerging from my son’s right eye. It was hesitant, quivering. I kept blowing into my instrument. It was the only thing I could do to contend with my fear and despair. Something came detached from the eye—just a shiver of pale green. I couldn’t understand. I grabbed hold of the thing and saw that it was a butterfly. My son kept a small tin box in his pocket for his marbles, a whistle, all his little-boy treasures. I emptied it out and put the insect inside. And then a few minutes later, his mother died too. At the sound of my harmonica, a butterfly slipped out of her right eye. A gorgeous one, the deep colors of midnight.”
When Alice left, the doctor understood that she wouldn’t want to see him anymore.
*
A few weeks went by. His patients presented with insignificant maladies: sore throats, gastritis, sprains. Nothing to suggest an impending influx of Lepidoptera. He’d only been present for five or six deaths since he’d set up his practice here, and two of those didn’t count. As winter approached, Pile hoped that the damp cold would bring its fair share of germs to town, but the natives were a sturdy bunch. He’d come to the wrong place for butterfly hunting.
One Sunday afternoon he went to the town park. Madame Chartreux, who noted what a long time it had been since last she saw him, was all smiles. The brass band’s concert was about to start. More than half of the musicians on the bandstand, the conductor among them, were identical. Pile looked around at the audience. He recognized the mayor’s wife by her jewelry, the pharmacist by his goiter, and the parish priest by the prayer book sticking out of his pocket.
He ran to Trois Grenadiers hill in a rage. No sooner had Alice opened the door than he was ordering her to put an end to her activities and threatening to report her to the police if she persisted.
“I suppose you find it more proper to lie in wait for people to die so you can pin some poor creatures for your collection?”
“You’re so self-centered. You know you’re putting me at a disadvantage when you steal faces. It’s even occurred to me that you’re purposely targeting the old and the weak, the ones most likely to die soon, just to make me watch them for nothing.”
Her only reply was a disdainful smile.
“This collection matters so much to me,” he continued. “In the end, I’m not even doing anything wrong; I just play music for the dying. I make it easier for them.”
*
Dr. Pile’s office was closed for over a month. As luck would have it, he ran into Alice in the street as soon as he returned to town.
“Been away?” she asked, gesturing at his suitcase.
“Indeed. I was in India.”
“On vacation?”
“No. I was training at a medical research lab.”
“Oh,” she said indifferently. “I’ve heard people die in the streets there. I suppose you must have dozens of butterflies with you.”
During his absence, Alice had been busy as a bee. Plenty of folks had agreed to open the can. It was high time he intervened.
Two weeks after his return, he was called to a young man’s bedside and was unable to save him. The boy’s mother died shortly thereafter, followed by his sister. Once the tally of the dead had risen into double digits, newspapers started running headlines about this mysterious epidemic. The symptoms resembled those of a few diseases endemic to Asia, but specialists couldn’t reach a consensus about which one this was. At last Daniel Pile had the practice of his dreams. His collection kept growing.
One day a lady came to fetch him for her neighbor, who had been sick for several days but refused to see a doctor.
“Especially not you,” the lady said. “But she’s in a very bad way this morning, and the other doctors are busy, so I came anyway.”
He was not surprised when she led him to Alice’s house. Upon entering the bedroom, he saw that the neighbor wasn’t mistaken: Barely a glimmer of life remained in the young woman’s eyes. Nevertheless, Pile sensed that she could recognize him. He took her hand and began keeping watch.
Knowing how she abhorred the harmonica, he waited until the last possible moment to play his melody. When it was all over, he went down to the garden for a final visit to the band pavilion and its habitués. A violent wind had been blowing for several days, and most of the wax figures looked the worse for wear. A few had fallen over and broken in half, their faces vibrant as ever despite being covered in dust. He returned home, now and then patting the little tin box in his pocket. It contained one of his finest butterflies: orange, with streaks of gray and brown.
Translator’s Note:
Like much of Monique Debruxelles’s short fiction, “The Chimera Pavilion” is set in a funhouse-mirror version of rural France. These small towns may appear quaint and postcard-perfect from a safe distance, but a closer look reveals them to be rife with hazards. Upon arrival in any of Debruxelles’s fictional villages, tourists and newcomers ought to be given fair warning: If the supernatural forces don’t kill them, the local gossip and long-simmering resentments between neighbors just might.
When we first meet Daniel Pile, he is getting settled in a new town and struggling to keep his newly acquired medical practice afloat. Many residents seem to be avoiding treatment even though they suffer from a novel affliction characterized by a “faceless” appearance; worse still, he seems to be alone in noticing the preponderance of expressionless faces and vapid personalities among the local population. Just when the reader might expect him to investigate whether there’s something in the water, Dr. Pile discovers instead that there’s something in the soda cans: a mysterious chemical used by a grudge-holding local woman to wipe away her neighbors’ facial features. But saving his new neighbors from the threat hiding in plain sight isn’t a simple matter for him, in practical or ethical terms. He’s a perfectly capable physician, but his preferred medical device is the harmonica he plays when patients are on their deathbeds—and that music is intended for his benefit, not theirs.
In addition to Debruxelles’s hauntingly visceral imagery, the pleasures and challenges of translating a story like “The Chimera Pavilion” extend to its pacing. The revelation of Dr. Pile’s ulterior motives is gradual, and so is the change in tone—a vague unease that intensifies almost imperceptibly into a pervasive sense of dread. Word choices naturally contribute to that effect, but in the process of translating this story, I found punctuation and paragraph breaks to be just as important.
One key example of this falls early in the story, when we learn that Dr. Pile has concerns about the viability of his practice: “Either all the local residents were in excellent health or they were reluctant to trust a doctor who was new in town. Maybe he ought to leave and start over somewhere else.” Looking back at this passage with the knowledge we’ve gained by the end of the story, Dr. Pile’s meaning is brutally clear—his “butterfly hunting” would be easier in a place where more people were both sick and trusting of doctors—but without that context, it seems harmless. The reference to the locals being “in excellent health” initially sounds like a joke rather than a complaint; their supposed reluctance to trust an outsider would provide a logical explanation for his business troubles. Moreover, I think it’s natural that we as readers fill in some context that isn’t strictly on the page: “Maybe he ought to leave and start over somewhere else” because he needs to make a living or because he wants to find a community where his services are needed and appreciated. While the original French text has no paragraph break after that sentence, I’ve inserted one in the English translation to make this brief passage more visible on the page and encourage readers to linger on this brilliant moment of subtle misdirection.
Monique Debruxelles is the author of four short story collections and co-author of three crime novels. Her short fiction appeared for the first time in English in 2022, in The Southern Review. Retired from a career in the civil service, she lives in a suburb of Paris and writes the mystery and magic that lie beneath even the most mundane routines.
Laura Nagle is a translator and writer based in Indianapolis. Her translations of prose and poetry from French and Spanish have appeared in journals including AGNI, The Southern Review, and The Los Angeles Review. Songs for the Gusle, her translation of Prosper Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, La Guzla, is forthcoming from Frayed Edge Press.
From a rocky perch you scan your eye over the scene for a moment. Then you recall once, a long way back, you’d set off from this very spot. —Steinn Steinarr
Welsh-blue canvas facing the southern mountains.
Saturation of colors in which the spectator is aroused by bleating sheep.
Projections reflected off of an exterior wall.
Video shot with a fisheye lens, as if completely underwater.
Teapots, cups, plates, glasses, spoons fall softly.
A woman watches the spectator from the wall.
She makes her way through seaweed and coral reefs.
Objects sink.
She keeps smiling, nothing disturbs the feeling.
She mouths: The world was on fire and no one could save me but you while Chris Isaak plays in the background.
Kaleidoscopic visions.
The spectator becomes an interactive entity.
The garden houses two red armchairs of monumental scale,
a gigantic lamp dimly flickers.
In another corner a medium TV displays
photographs framing parts of a naked body, mountain horizons, bursts of color and texture, memories of flashes:
rhythmic essences of video clips, paradoxes, detonators for found feelings, shots of dialogue:
identification and similitudes: visual code: mass media:
paintings swirling behind the glass.
Multicolored blanket covering a prone body. Frost of sweat and wine. The relic of a saint amid the light footsteps of summer. An aurora borealis under an arm. A desert mirage on snow-covered ground. Familiar territory of childhood.
Eat wild truffles until you pass out.
A celebration of prayer, a plea for the deer.
Airship trailing a metallic line until it reaches a point of t h a t distance.
While proceeding /aimless/ in the sand /ferocious/ among fleeting aerial serpents she observes (captive eye before cosmic opacity):
b r i e f g l i m p s e s o f b e a u t y.
Those faces.
Sonic sketch. Heart percussions in flight.
State your name: Hydrocodone-acetaminophen at the foot of a snowy peak.
Clouds.
The spectator drinks words by the gallon. History intervening on his eyelids.
Black stains on the wet.
Phrasing.Delimiting word or mother tongue.
Auroras borealis.Spiral galaxies.
Lowered onto tongue, one capsule, every six hours, as needed.
Waving arms.Save me.
Smells and marks out. In the immensity, he tackles. Inside geysers, an ageless paradise.
One moment identical to the next. and to the next. and to the next.
Clouds.
Clouds. Clouds.
Fingernails skin shoulders left ear. A bomb flies across the sky.
A point of that distance. That’s what we are.
Can you hear the nearby song, each time deeper inside?
Let’s burn away. Without a trace.
There.
Coda
Sentado en una piedra recorres con tu vista el escenario un instante. Recuerdas entonces que una vez, una vez hace ya mucho, echaste a andar desde este mismo sitio.
Steinn Steinarr
Lienzo de azul galés frente a las montañas del Sur.
Saturación de colores donde el espectador es provocado por balido de ovejas.
Proyecciones reflejadas en muro al aire libre.
Video grabado con lente “ojo de pez”, casi de manera total bajo el agua.
Ella mantiene la sonrisa, nada rompe la sensación.
Mueve los labios: The world was on fire and no one could save me but you mientras se escucha de fondo a Chris Isaac.
Visiones caleidoscópicas.
El espectador se vuelve un ente interactivo.
El jardín alberga dos sillones rojos a escala monumental,
una lámpara gigante apenas ilumina.
En otra esquina un televisor de mediano formato presenta
fotografías de partes de un cuerpo desnudo, horizontes de montaña, estallidos de color
y texturas, recuerdos de lo fugaz:
esencias rítmicas de videoclips, paradojas, detonadores
de sensaciones encontradas, imágenes de diálogo:
identificación y similitudes: código visual: medios
masivos:
pinturas que se mueven detrás del cristal.
Manto multicolor sobre cuerpo tendido. Escarcha de sudor y vino. Entre las pisadas ligeras del verano una reliquia de santo. Aurora boreal bajo el brazo. Espejismo del desierto en tierra nevada. Conocido territorio de la infancia.
Come trufas silvestres hasta perder el sentido.
Celebración de plegarias,
rezo para los ciervos.
Aerostático sobre línea metálica hasta alcanzar un punto de e s a distancia.
Mientras avanza /al azar/ en la arena /feroz/ entre aéreas serpientes fugaces observa (cautivo ojo ante opacidad cósmica):
f u g a c e s d e s t e l l o s d e b e l l e z a.
Esos rostros.
Trazo sónico. Vuelo de percusiones en el corazón.
Enunciar su nombre: Hidrocodeína con acetaminofén a pies de nevado.
Nubes.
El espectador bebe galones de palabras. Intervención de la Historia en los párpados.
Manchas negras sobre humedad.
Fraseo.Palabra que delimita o lengua madre.
Auroras boreales. Galaxias de punto radial.
Calado en lengua, una tableta cada seis horas, según el dolor.
Balanceo de brazos. Sálvame.
Huele y demarca. En la inmensidad, ataja. Paraíso de los años en géiseres.
Instante idéntico al siguiente. y al siguiente. y al siguiente.
Nubes.
Nubes.Nubes.
Uñas piel hombros oído izquierdo. Una bomba vuela por los cielos.
Un punto de esa distancia.
Somos.
¿Escuchas el canto cercano, cada vez más dentro?
Ardamos. Hasta desparecer.
Ahí.
Translator’s Note
“Coda” is the final poem in Rocío Cerón’s poetry collection Borealis. In her book, Rocío explores language’s limits as disjointed images pile up into an improbable still life—arctic landscapes, relic-filled cathedrals, clinical operating rooms, the motionless anticipation before a dropped bomb, a catastrophe built without verbs. While these poems stand alone, Cerón’s multi-vocal, fragmentary, imagistic approach on the page bears strong traces of her live performances. I encourage any interested reader to visit her site for videos of Rocío performing from Borealis, where her poems are fully realized in the multi-disciplinary practice she calls “expanded poetry.” The energy and rhythm of her readings have had just as much influence on my translation as our conversations on individual word choice and meaning. Thanks for reading.
Poet and multimedia artist Rocío Cerón is based in Mexico City. Her work transits between artistic languages creating transmedia pieces. She recently has released the sound poetry album Sonic Bubbles (2020) and the poetry collection Spectio (2019). Follow her creative process on instagram.com/laobservante/ and read/hear/see her work on rocioceron.com.
Dallin Law is a translator from the Spanish, focusing on experimental Mexican literature. His translations of Rocío Cerón have also been published in The Canary, Poetry Daily, Denver Quarterly, and Circumference. He is a graduate of the Translator’s Workshop at the University of Iowa.
The seasons were punctuated by extremes. Long, bitter winters with endless snowfall and hot, summer days giving way to monsoon and torrential downpour. Though they called it a valley it was really a slope, an upland mesa, formed by erosion over millions of years, since the earliest days of the planet’s existence, carving out mountains and cliffs made of metamorphic rock, rugged and craggy, casting deep shadows when sunlight descended below the horizon.
And the sun shone a lot. The land was first green though eventually they named it yellow. But it was also often golden, when the aspen trembled and changed colors beside the spruce and evergreen. Truthfully, the land was mostly brown. A color no one likes to talk about. Rich with mineral, viscose and muddy. The animals certainly didn’t care: grazing even-toed ungulates that were splendidly horned, packs of canines, and birds aplenty.
Many people were born there but more just showed up, or were brought – by their husbands, or as captives, or forced by the will of their god. They claimed, and intended to cultivate the soil but over time only choked it with tillage and crops, stealing water and making dams, with beasts of burden trampling the land. Eventually boundaries were drawn, barriers arbitrary and destructive, gifted by monarchs on other continents. Those who were born there defended it but the boundaries changed hands, different owners maybe but still the same old thing.
The people blended and blended and forgot how they started. Names and cultures persisted but many more were eradicated. Isolation was pervasive. And most of those who remained never thought that inaction was a form of collusion. A courthouse was built, emulating a society purporting to rid itself of excess, without ornamentation, with the insistence that empire was the birthplace of living. A new identity mounted under the banner of freedom, flagpoles proudly displaying their inclusion into a culture that does not want them.
Nowadays it’s a ruin – just decrepit, old houses forgotten. A ballroom with no ceiling. A barn that’s collapsing. The people used to proclaim, Land, or death. But I think it might be and.
Dowsing
July fizzles. It languishes and snaps, then ends, again and again. So you pursue moisture. Rippling off of your skin, packed into venues, incessantly sweating. You are overdressed and ashamed to be wet. But you’ll never be younger and just love to dance.
Dive into the ocean, its warm buoyant waters. Trust your body to float; become the girl from Ipanema. It curls around and within, lowering defenses, letting a man suck on each of your toes. But spit is mostly water too, so be careful. Sickness follows you.
It surrounds you. Nearly eight-hundred thousand gallons at once. But it’s still not enough. So you hunker down and stay in one place where the tap water is celebrated, traveling through pipes where there’s nothing to waste.
But you’re restless, you know. You head north to the tides, sinusoidal and flat, to a place like New Brunswick that gives while it takes. Learn what it means to prevent your escape.
Choose to go without and retreat back to drought. Take it wherever it can be found. Watering holes, brackish and green. Sneaking into hotel swimming pools. The Sunset Marquis. You try not to be seen. House-sitting. Your high school friend’s wedding, cigars and cheeseburgers in a jacuzzi.
Some islands unnerve you, saline reminders of absence, while glacial lakes fold and envelope, water too cold to provide for your body.
But eventually you learn how to make do with what’s what. Shorter showers. Less is okay – it’s still a lot. Daily hydration, don’t forget. You are a fish with horns. Sweat is just sweat.
Some merciful rivers continue to flow, cascading off granite – reminders each summer that you are a visitor still. And when July returns, you come to a hole, jack-hammered through a foundation, and are told all about an artesian well. Sources of water that can be nearly infinite. And you stop to think, Can you believe it? Abundance.
Greg Luna (he/him) is a queer Chicano writer and filmmaker. His work has been supported by the Kenyon Review, Tin House, i-D Magazine, Interview Magazine, and NewFest: The New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival. He is a graduate of the Kanbar Institute of Film & Television at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and lives in Los Angeles. He is currently at work on his first novel: an intergenerational family saga set in the American Southwest. He can be found on Twitter at @gregluna.
GLAMOUR / I harvest for an altar / snowbush clippings / Dutch still lifes / Brooklyn Barbies / discarded condom / cloaked in glitter / my eidolons / o,a,blation / to fashion / “technologies of self” / to cohere / slow as salt / a cur,ation of / straw dolls / golden ring / light above / which defies / the blur of extinction / “tarot as mirror” / a shifting practice / stems from / the vase / f,unction / in f,lux / I want to be / elsewhat / flotsam / haunts the throat / I whistle / my antiphons / green kundimans / the ‘ō‘ō call / one-hit wonders / yes / some ghosts are welcome
GLAMOUR / I figure an object into being / a ceramic jug / which bears / nub teeth / googly eyes / a garbled mouth / it chews / speech spits / back profanation / listen / it’s an imprecise alchemy / to en,chant / points in a series / which in,dic,t,ates / what encodes / a toad and its stools / a forked tongue / whisper of flesh / I throw my enemies / a parade / why deny myself / a new desire / blooms / an arrangement / broken tulips / lemon peels / bale of wools / costume jewelry / the male feathers / golden calves / skincare routine / larva / rendered fat / my bubble machine / my pleasure circus / how best / to sublimate / to be sublime
Grammar
GRAMMAR / who is at the door / to map / a shifting terrain / a hermeneutics of self / a heretic / a “physical website” / I repeat to myself / knowledge which falls / out of my body / and intuit / arches / towards a locality / bends air / or descends upon it / a threshold of trees / what hinges on / my proximity to capital / empire / I am edging / the lines here / I furrow / in the creek bed / I look for / my corner / I look / dumb / struck across the body / of water / the ferryman / inside I reach / for a coin / to bite / which leaks / a string / of Janus words / that which / means its opposite / to weather / to splice / to c, leave
GRAMMAR / moonphase / illus,trat,ion / what obscures a body / of work / process / maintenance / labored breathing / I sift valences / find many teeth / arrive at many / im,ports / medicinal bark / oils / rare & rarefied / pomander / against all manner / of contagion / language of shame / to sanction / against silks / Gov. Dasmariñas / the friars / their illuminations / which state / our prurience / for food / & drink / & clothes / & gold / & fucking / & not property / my people / knew how to live / damn / the land / gives endlessly / to those who tend it / what use is there / in punishment / or paradise both / are here
GRAMMAR / correct / what the lens fails / moon’s immensity / in the eye / was it the rivers I placed / sipped from the collar creek / mistook for veins / or bones I dig / plasma-cracked / licked for syntax / bramble of star / thistle / darling /to decorate / decollate / a bird / which appears to me / imperious signs / overdetermined auspice / pleats / replete / my runic skin / or comma splice / “language of my oppressors” / is at times my own / pocketknife / is there any / undeterminate limb / locus of power / insect vistas / re,peat into / libidinal machine / old gods in the now / alien spaces / remember the enemy / is often beautiful
Grimoire
GRIMOIRE / the ceramic jug / has returned to kill me / I let it / know that parenting / is unmiraculous / every generation / should be aimless / the leaf / varie,gates / touch-me-nots / uncoiling / a totality of bodies / endless & queer / the intext of survival / our learned brush / stroke of / foxtail / wild orchids / inner thigh / hanging from my ribs / a bending light / a joint probability / escapes us / what leaves / dried & bound / induce an astral state / memory fails our magic / does not contain / a plurality of / worship / a stylish fringe / a sacred study / of faggots / be,hold me / unfollow the line / into another / a meteoroid / inertial / refractory / I stab at the sky / re,in,cite / incoherent factory / infinite perf,orations / multiversal gl,itch
Sebastian Barros (he/they) is a Brooklyn-based Filipinx poet whose work is featured and is forthcoming in Annulet, diaCRITICS, beestung, and more.
I once read the last part of a letter he wrote before his murder
I wouldn’t be able to write you anything half as eloquent, paint a world in which this string of words and em dash are enough are all
I wish that when you looked up the old west this was all you found love sealed in ink sealed in wax gun parts melted, sweethearts’ promises abound whites never feeling the urge to build a ship, one sturdy, able, thick pulse of a thing to withstand the non-Atlantic
Land never having left the hands of those who come from it
Who do I go to with this one? I grow up with some Annie Oakley crap and lies about the praries while perched near the Ala Wai when 4,389 miles away half of my heart is missing me my ancestors have been holding it and waiting but don’t know where I’ve been stashed away
Can’t call me home with pūtōrino or pūrerehua when I wouldn’t be able to recognize the sound
Does anyone else know that kind of feeling? You know the one where the blood is knotted so close together it starts fighting itself, a petition to move across the body, another limb a different artery, away from the parts that it finds savage strayed from God foresaken
What a strange life it is— the offspring of Anglia digging generations deep into Texas soil, a meeting house just minutes away from where Horouta beached in Te Tairāwhiti
Beneficiaries off the butchers for the New World a people who saw home fires snuffed out in succession both lines burn hard in me a mixing a legacy in two parts an attempt to reconcile so as to unearth some sort of beauty
Ngaio Simmons (she/her) is a Māori/pākehā spoken word artist and educator born and raised on the island of Oʻahu on Kānaka Maoli land in the unceded nation of Hawaiʻi. Now permanently residing in her ancestral homeland, Aotearoa, she is still writing about diaspora, identify conflict, and what it means to be Indigenous and queer in a world that repeatedly rejects both. She has been published in Contemporary Verse, Flux Hawaiʻi, Literary Hub, Ora Nui, Hawaiʻi Review, and Bamboo Ridge, among others. Her poem “Whānau” was recently featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series for AAPI month.
I need a new tattoo. A bird in the shape of an angel on my back, a form that rolls and folds against my own – that moves both with and for me
What has preserved me these last few years is the feeling of being stitched, point by point, into a new body, one made up by the body of my body and the hands of another. To feel a foreign art carefully attached to my own
And if I am in this moment, it is not those wings that brought me here. My first respite from the world was not my mothers womb, but a trap: a snare that gnawed and gnawed until I was no longer whole. I have scars across my shoulders from the things I have escaped, and I am ready to see them burned
I want to be abandoned by god in reverse
//
I need a new tattoo. A bird in the sh ape of an angel on my back, a form that rolls and folds the feeli
point by point, into a new body, one mad
the hands of another To fe el a foreign ached to my own
brought me h My first respite
from thnot my mothers womb, bp: a snare that gnawed no longer wh scars across mythe things I have escape
d, and I am ready to see them burnedtndoned by god in reverse
//
| ,. I am a body .,.foreign to my own mother: || a scar across god I / |
sterling-elizabeth arcadia (she/they) is a trans poet and lover of birds. her work has been published inpoetry.onl, HAD, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. she is a first year MFA in creative writing at Rutgers–Camden. this poem is part of a series of burning haibuns (a form invented by torrin a. greathouse), the first of which can be read here: https://www.poetry.onl/read/ster-el.
orange rinds and hoops after school wandering hands in that void of a closet got big teeth like a beast, sinking—
fires in my chest; I am eating the last of you. Little pounding nymph. Boxing gloves against the caverns—these damned walls are thick.
You’re straight like an octagon. A million tiny dots on that globe I can’t shoot. You’d laugh, you ever hit it from the back?
2) Database Animal
I am [ ] I’ve been chewing at the moon—barking. Fucking on Wednesdays. Resting on Fridays. On one at the Turkey Hill—drinking gasoline some guerilla shit.
Eat till full, molars crush rinds. Seraphs too, wings and horns,
all bodies are [mine]
Y2K deathmachines; factory farm sonata. You better meet me in the middle.
Listen moment static hits. I’ll meet you there. Bring the goods. You’re a god today. Bring everything. I’ve/got/the/cash/in/my/screen bring the goods to the drop spot.
// error
4) trauma maps
a) ontologies
Trauma
Acceleration
$$$$ Data
$$$$
Autonomy
Uprooting Blood
Quarks
Parts
Simples Theism
b) [memorytype] the gig fucked up club oldheadwithhands onmyback
seehisfaceintheevenings, tracingoutlinesonmyback
5) Repeat
does the void speak in tongues or the queen’s English?
a) Autodidactic
orange rinds and hoops after school wandering hands in that void of a closet got big teeth like a beast, sinking—
fires in my chest; I am eating the last of you. Little pounding nymph. Boxing gloves against the caverns—these damned walls are thick.
Been drinking gasoline in the mornings fucking on Wednesdays, resting on Fridays— watching market trajectories like blood-sport.
I am [ ]
Eat till full. Molars crush rinds. Seraphs too, wings and horns,
all bodies are [mine]
Y2K deathmachines; factory farm sonata. The hot silence pre-Disaster Engine. Machinelearning into hyper-capital—
technoanimalia, I am a legion on the face of advancement, the vanguard to a dying day.
Phenomena: 1) Café Let’s fuck during the Zapruder film. We can drive a ‘74 Cadillac off desert roads till your trauma catches up to you. If we unravel, I call dibs on the brain. The font of the organs spread like d r e a m s
2) Home Singsong advertisers, sing me to sleep. Tear me into quarks, spread me thin;
eat me whole as I whistle that church bell melody, the death tone.
Guide me down the roads where I found love on blacktops and
you—are one, and all bodies subsist in their solipsistic glow—O’ melodrama!
Got four walls and I’m screaming— head into plaster, chewingonthumbs.
3) The City overlapping traumamaps noise.noise.noise. fuzzy warm [blankets]
screaming.
4) Everywhere repeat. 5) Nihilism fuck that. a) Ontology Roots Sex Love Body
Rest Labor
//error
[start up: init //002]
What’s the harm in lips?
I read an article on the calisthenics of communism and the inherent freedom from capital that comes with lifting oneself via branch or bar. Parallel bars rooted in concrete utopias—where the body defies gravity, where each second is a fight. It’s all in the control. The tearing
of muscles, when shoulders become planets—when the body, reacts to the abuse. A feeling of flight in the muscle-up, a communal celebration in the park across the elementary school where shells sleep on pavement like an ocean landscape in the evenings.
X-ActoTM knives, boxcutters, and anything with some grit—it’s all in the control. The tearing of epidermis. Those fascists want blood. Predatory opportunists, they slept in backpacks and drawers, cunning friends when his hands grasped my face.
It’s all in the control—of breakbeats and vibrating fluorescents. Make the people dance. Kiss the boy with long sleeves and hands tucked in pockets. What’s the harm in lips? Repeat these words. Talk about time like liquid and not like a carved out stone.
In Calisthenics, one aims for hypertrophy, growth from the conjunction of time and tearing. It’s all in the control of repetitions, of breath. The control of repeated pain in hopes of accessing
something new. More control, more strength, the shaping of the self into something else— it’s all in the control of etymology to create long words like calisthenics. The conjoining of beauty and strength, the image of Plato wrestling boys before his hands spun sophistry down their chitons—the definition of justice is justice and the world is a series of shapes like puppets
in a cave where control is key to the shadows they make. You are not like Plato and your hands still move. Like shadows in a cave—I’ve been seeing you in the evenings. The silhouettes of time shapeshifting on my walls. My hands move differently now. No longer grasping sharp
edges, or any boy with some control fantasy. My hands curl into fists clutching rings and branches and bars. It’s all in the control of moments, holding my breath, engaging my core as the blisters form and your face starts peering in like the violence in daylight or an email, something
so normal. Out of my control. I found a picture of us, two pleather jackets and my half-smile, a face like a car wreck. You still make people dance. The boy in that photo would leave and dig into drawers and backpacks, the normal things. He would reek of the cheapest bodega liquor.
He wouldn’t really read Plato, he’d carry some dialog sometimes. He’d dig into himself without the growth, just fascist edges and a marked up outer layer. He wouldn’t expect to spend days in the sun, grasping at branches— totally in control. Trauma mapping, not deconstructing—
In 1998, Serial Experiments Lain debuted. The series featured a series of adolescent suicides. Children abandoned their bodies to become one with “The Wired,” an early symbol for the world wide web. The first time I thought strongly about suicide was in 1999— I was four years old.
I read a chain letter on AOL and believed that if I took my life first, I would be saved from the haunting an adolescent suicide victim would bestow on me (per the email). My breathing accelerated, my mind was racing, I spent an evening in the ER with my first panic attack.
Recurring thoughts into catatonia—my time in the self-harm haze was controlled. Household objects repurposed—I became one with space. Evenings spent in thrash den paradises, learning to socialize in isolation. I met flame with
hazy eyes, greasy hair and love which only flowed outward. Everything passes. Mitigated voids, held hands through the worst of it. Vomitfire nights—talked of songs, hummed melodies under motel moonlight, cigarette butts in the parking lot ballroom.
Mixed Lexapro with clear liquor and concave brain—smashed my head into walls until the lights went out. I wanted so badly to swim. Nerves at white corners, all my connections are fractured. Tying knots, trying to tighten my connection—every second is a reminder—is a stall tactic.
Every time I pass a diner, I think of a friend who used to bus tables. She took her leave at twenty-eight after a man systematically maimed her. We met in Pittsburgh; smoking cigarettes outside of a Super-8 when I was young and taking the long road to decay. While having coffee or
when a morning breeze is too calm, I think of hanging bodies. Like the swaying of leaves, or Suzuki Izumi alone in her apartment. Dissociating in motion or mid-conversation; I have yet to find words grounding enough to keep me here. I wonder what she thought of before the leap?
Before me, my father served time in solitary confinement. The minutes kept adding up like centuries. When I was five, he told me he tried to starve himself to death. I pictured his big hands smashing against concrete; his face gaunt, and my body disappearing.
My body is a survived future. My hands are automated machines, they clutch at my neck or pinch at thumbs, I paw for a pulse to remember something about autonomy while someone, somewhere else is abandoning themselves entirely.
There is a targeted ad promising to press cremation ashes into a record with all your favorite songs burned to the remnants of your loved ones. I heard Facebook is working on a deceased section: and I think I am still alive on a Myspace page or AOL chatroom where a man wants to fuck my seven-year old brains out. I am alive everywhere eternally, and with my feet on the ground and my throat wilting— do I need to have a body? My flesh might fertilize honeysuckle on a patch of green or glutton the plastic-full seabream off the coasts of some island, only one maxxxed out credit card away. Do I need to have a body in order to subsist on a heating globe or for my loved ones to remember my face now that my prints are digital, should I wait for the revolution in virtual reality when my sprawled out flesh can be re- animated. How many times does a symbol have to shatter before the simulacra is enough? Do I need to have a body/
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Eros Livieratos (he/they) is a currently an MFA candidate in creative writing at The Ohio State University. Eros’ writing tackles topics of identity, capitalism, art, and the Anthropocene—their poems seek to deconstruct theoretical and systemic frameworks. Eros is a harsh-noise artist and can often be found yelling about aesthetics & automation in your local basement. They’re on Instagram and Twitter, as well as his website, eroslivieratos.com.
The Plane Lands at Ben Gurion and Every Passenger Bursts Into Song
tradescantia
from the mundane root. an oyster plant. a spiderwort. its variegated purple across nearly every flowering inch of the world. sweet Moses-in-the-cradle-lily. amethyst Angel of Doubt. o Lucy, Saint of Sight, blind me to etymology, the perse plum pit in every story about G-d. what wildflower deserves this wandering? to be buried in a grave so violet? a name so violent it once curbed the crucifixion. yes, cursed to roam until Christ returns. sisyphean in our ignorance. my aunt gave cuttings away each winter as a Hanukkah gift (we all need a little Jew in our lives) terracotta exodus. tangles of it end- lessly growing. creeping across oceans. spreading over continents. the lurking of a lesser theology. o Lord, leave us to our legs, our purple leaves. Lord, where we grow, so do the conditions for surrender. look us in the root. o Lord, Lord, let even the seed of affliction bloom into a blessing.
Matryoshka
Zach Goldberg is a writer, educator, and arts organizer from Durham, NC. He is the author of XV (Nomadic Press, 2020) and is a 2021 MRAC Next Step Fund grantee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Washington Square Review, New South, and elsewhere. He lives on occupied Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. Find him online @gach_zoldberg.
The way you play this game is simple: there is a boy on a skateboard and the boy has four lives. The goal of
the game is to get the boy on the skateboard to the end of the racecourse. The racecourse is not an oval
or a circle; it’s a city. Miles translate into a pixels. The pixels may be counted. The counting, of course, is not
a requirement, but a strategy:
the math works like this: a clinitron bed, which could relieve the pressure on bedsores, costs upwards of 40,000 dollars. Less than one milliliter of infected blood may lead to sepsis. If septic I would be hospitalized and placed in a clinitron bed. Once sepsis is cleared I would be sent home and to the same bed that caused my wounds. An obvious pattern would emerge.[1]
The city is blocked off by buildings. The stairs supplemented by railings. The ramps are
fashioned into figure eights. To take the stairs would crack the skull. To ride the railings would break a leg. To risk
the ramps would lie to gravity. The skateboard boy has four lives and with each death he can experience
partial revival. The funding for complete revival floats at the end of the racecourse in a pot of stars. The pot of stars is surrounded by
a pit of fire and evil wizards. The evil wizards hold both the wand of Sudden Death and the Key to Level Up
The concept of step therapy is simple: just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s the best option. A medication made out of dirt is the same as a medication made out of chemicals. Both drugs have capsules. Both drugs are dissolvable. The idea is not to dwell on differences but to be grateful for your temporary survival.
In a simulated attempt to Level-Up, the skateboard boy calculates the inertia needed to conquer the ramps. The skateboard boy
succeeds the figure eight but on the way down gets shocked by the wizard’s wand of death. The boy loses one life, revives
inside the pit of fire and loses a second life. The skateboard boy bleeds from his neck and stomach. He can see
the pot of stars, but, oh, are the wizards laughing.
The concept of step therapy in practice: Because Carrie Ann worked for the state, she had to use state insurance…. In January of 2018 she got a cold which turned into a trach and lung infection. Her insurance company UnitedHealthcare, refused to pay for the one specific inhaled antibiotic that she really needed. She had to take a less effective drug and had a bad reaction to that drug.[2]
To revive from the second death is to not to be confused with the revival of Jesus. The body quivers with
electricity. Nerves tingle. Burn marks fester and bleed. Bacteria crawls into open sores
and tissue necrotizes. Stars blur into the retina, begins visual snow. Lack of blood flow to the brain…
Bouts of sepsis, an increasing number of wounds and hospitalizations. Over the period of time my body will weaken, sepsis will become increasingly difficult to treat and recover from.[1] In this state, the wizard shocks the boy again.
Of course, there are strategies: trick the wizard, take out the middleman, start a go-fund me, grow
a rich uncle, a relationship with the president, unblock the buildings, throw the wizard into the fire,
fix the ramps, find the bug, rewrite the program.
My name is Carrie Ann Lucas. I am here today on behalf of Not Dead Yet … If I were to become depressed… and this bill passes, I could go to my doctor and ask for a lethal prescription. Because I have a disability, and because physicians are terrible at evaluating quality of life of people with disabilities, I would likely be given that lethal prescription.[3]
The doctor comes into your room in the hospital at night and shares the math with you:
this medication, bed, treatment, pill, stars, Level-Up will costs 2,000 dollars. Not to mention the cost of wound care is astronomical.
It’s your choice how you would like to proceed, he says gently. He tells you he can make you very comfortable.
[1] Peace, Bill “Worse Wound Care Woes” Bad Cripple. 24, April, 2019, http://badcripple.blogspot.com/2019/04/worse-wound-care-woes.html
[2]Lucas, Carrie Ann. Carrie Ann Lucas Death. Facebook. 24 Feb. 2019 https://www.facebook.com/CarrieAnnLucasPersonal/posts/10217145330961609 Accessed 26, Oct. 2019
[3] Lucas, Carrie Ann. “Carrie Ann Lucas Testimony in Opposition of Colorado SB 16-025.” Not Dead Yet, 3 Feb. 2016, notdeadyet.org/carrie-ann-lucas-testimony-in-opposition-of- sb-16-025. Accessed 27 Oct. 2019.
Rachel Litchman (Rachel DL) is a queer, disabled artist, writer, and member of the Dane County Youth Action Board. Her work centers themes of survivorship, trauma, chronic illness, disability rights and justice. She has been published in Colorado Review, Rooted in Rights, Redivider, and Black Warrior Review, among other places. She is at work on a graphic novel about being hospitalized during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can find her on twitter @wordcalculator or on her website racheldl.com.
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