“As we slowly forget the dead, we slowly draw closer to them . . . ” says a dour man met by accident. It’s true. Bees fell asleep and I remember nobody. In yellow leaves I don’t recognize your wrinkled face. Translated by Piotr Gwiazda “Bees Fell Asleep” was published in Los Angeles […]
On the way back from work, he would always buy half a roasted chicken. Then a rumor went around that he had hanged himself in the park outside the city. The owner of the poultry store couldn’t comprehend why he had lost his best customer. Staring at the moon, he kept wiping his […]
He moves in front of me. I can hear words . . . A prayer? A snake bite? I enter a fog tunnel. The guide falls silent. No way back. I grope my way forward. (Life is unbearable.) Translated by Piotr Gwiazda “Zero Visibility” was published in The Nation (June […]
He resembled me. I held him up to my lips, then threw him into the salty water. He sank to the bottom. I heard a giggle. An invitation to play together. Translated by Piotr Gwiazda “Twin” was published in The Nation (June 22-29, 2015). You can read and listen to the […]
To be reincarnated as a crab. Even this variant would satisfy me. Translated by Piotr Gwiazda “Crab” was published in Pleiades 35.2 (2015). You can read and listen to the poem in the original Polish here.
I’ve returned from an island to an island. Meanwhile, you gorge yourself on mainland cherries. The sea and the cumuli separate us. I’m not a bird and you’re not a dolphin. Translated by Piotr Gwiazda “Birds and Dolphins” was published in Pleiades 35.2 (2015). You can read and listen to the poem in […]
The man who paints points to the wall tells me about hunger and the exiles the man who paints shivers in colors he spews out his life when he coughs / spits blood Vallejo is everywhere squalor is red when it hits the wall when they cough it up it peers out the chest […]
With your left hand in your jacket pocket you stroke that gun at night as if it were a woman or a wish Translated by Catherine Jagoe “Mario” first appeared in the collection En la boca de los tristes (Montevideo, LoQueVendrá, 2014). You can read and listen to the […]