Poetry

  • Art and Photography,  Poetry,  Translation

    Five micro-poems by Margarita Serafimova (translated from the Bulgarian) Photography by Milen Neykov

     

    L’éternel retour
    (Eternal Return)

     

    An animal I am when I love you,

    and above my face, an aureole of cosmic bodies is spinning –

    ringed planets; a star’s glint.

     

    ***

     

    L’éternel retour
    (Вечното завръщане)

     

    Животно съм, когато те обичам,

    а над лицето ми се върти ореол от космически тела –

    планети с пръстени; отблясък на звезда.

  • Poetry

    “Between Grief and Nothing” by Linnea Nelson

    What interests me takes place in the interval
    between two people.
    For example, one half

    inch from your human body,
    I can feel the heat of your life
    without touching you.

    Nothing I learned in school
    is as essential as that.
    Or that the reverse is true.

    Or that, between grief and nothing,
    there is a broad, bright space.
    What happens to me alone

    never seems important. Last week,
    the dusk draped heavily
    on the valley was beautiful,

  • Poetry,  Translation

    “Orange” and “South 2” by Michel Vachey (Translated from the French by S. C. Delaney and Agnès Potier)

     

     

    ORANGE

     

    Air France stewardesses are in danger

    carmine strokes the dried blood near some petals slams into the sink of the crime now softly blazes on crimson curtains

    pink only belongs to pink roses

    why does orange gall us, revolt us, sicken our stomachs and our hearts to the point of despairing of a varnished and vanquished rage?

    color that, henceforth, symbolizes most of all chemistry, which is the plastic reality of modern life beyond any philosophical and political concern,

  • Poetry

    “Bartering: Day after Diagnosis” by Cassie Garison

    I will give you my horns, hooked
    & taurean. I will give you my crown,
    woven from rose-thorns and olive
    branch, copper wire & shards
    of glass. I have been collecting
    shells: fastening them together
    with scraps of twine, wind them tight
    around my neck. They drag me deep
    beneath a rabid sea. Other days:
    I press each conch into my skin
    let it sting like iron at the hip
    of a cow.
  • Art and Photography,  Cross-Genre,  Poetry,  Translation

    Four Poems by Bronka Nowicka from “To Feed the Stone” (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster) Drawings by Lula Bajek

    Box

    Mother doesn’t know that heaven exists. She’s getting a double chin from looking down. Her head, as heavy as an iron, presses that fold down.

            Father keeps getting in mother’s way. He’s short. To reach grown-up things, he needs to stand on his tippy-toes or get a chair. He just moved it by pressing his belly against the seat. Now he points to the cushions. He needs them stacked to reach the table. He clambers up, props his elbows on the counter covered with an oilcloth, next to a spoon,

  • Poetry

    “Come Next Spring” by Paul Bamberger

    “the epochal consciousness has turned a somersault in the void”
    Karl Jaspers
    from: Man in Modern Times
    come next spring this category will swing its gate closed
    yes yes we’re ready
    but who are they these poets
    we have no idea
    could they be the wicked little joke we never quite understood but laughed at anyway
    we don’t believe so
    misdemeanors unallotted time and space
    more than that
    much more
    a fight to the draw perhaps
    that would be too sad
    could they be a metaphor lost to an empty conclusion
    too far afield
    why then don’t we just say they are mercy screaming down a hill after waking the bones
    the scavenging moon in chase
    you might be onto something here
    and do they come back often
    yes come in spring so we are told
    looking for what
    who knows
    i have heard they suffer bad mood swings
    we’ll see
    *

    Paul Bamberger received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts Writing Program.