Translated by Anne Milano Appel
“Either it isn鈥檛 a secret but I don鈥檛 know what it is; or I know but it鈥檚 a secret; or it鈥檚 a secret and on top of that I don鈥檛 know what it is.”
Literary
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
I鈥檇 never experienced the comfort of hearing a familiar language鈥檚 soft rumble within a crowd, the warmth of feeling at home amid strangers.
By Illia Ponomarenko
Morning comes to Kyiv again. That was indeed a dramatic night. Not only in the sense of a giant death army standing at the gate.
Translated by Daria Chernysheva
She places Th茅odore conspicuously in the center of her stand…Th茅odore received special treatment. He has a label, and on that label is his name in big letters, 罢贬脡翱顿翱搁贰…
Translated by Sonia Alland
This poem is not a true poem
it is a refuge for the wounded approaches of evening
for conquered partisans
a bed for rivers that are doomed
an open space for deer that contemplate the waterfall
for the men behind the walls鈥 saltpeter
and those trees weighed down in the album of memory.
Translated by Zenia Tompkins and Nina Murray
I faced a very tall man, dressed in camo and holding an AK鈥47. He grabbed me by the neck and held me up against the wall while closing the door with his other hand. He was so massive that I wondered why he bothered with the machine gun at all.
By Ani Gjika
In Albania in the nineties … men in their twenties and thirties are hungry to align themselves with what they perceive as power … harassing girls and women wherever…
Translated by Peter Sherwood
Mikl贸s was no longer a real being, just a sender of letters with news not from real life but rather as evidence of some sophisticated fiction, as if he were writing to and for himself, to prove that the body that existed in her imagination was not just a doppelg盲nger of her desires.
Translated by Tess Lewis
Everything breaks, everything becomes wrinkled,
everything is defeated,
we are born to see others fall and bleed,
he flatters who calls us wisps,
but as I crumble, I will make daylight reign.
Translated by Zenia Tompkins
You鈥檙e…moved by the welcoming calm and serenity of provincial Ukraine…suddenly you realize that from under a kiosk…the barrel of a machine gun is aimed at your chest.
Translated by Mira Rosenthal
that color once existed here. And dust gets in./ The nests of ants and mice now totally exposed./ A moving out, an exodus. This once was home./ Once light and heat and fire. Now so much wind.
By Christopher Miller
We passed several colorful messages now scrawled across the traffic signs. One appealed to the enemy鈥檚 humanity: 鈥淩ussian soldier, stop! How will you look into your children鈥檚 eyes? Leave!鈥
Translated by Julia Conrad
For a Sicilian, understanding Sicily means understanding oneself. It means choosing to be absolved or condemned. And it means resolving the fundamental tension that plagues us, the oscillation between claustrophobia and claustrophilia, between a hatred and love of seclusion.
Translated by Monica Cure
Our house has become a shelter for kids whose parents beat them. Everyone knows we鈥檙e home alone, because we鈥檙e almost never visited by an old person, I mean an adult.
By H茅l猫ne B. Ducros
The 夜色直播 editor’s favorite literary translations of 2023 from or concerning Europe.
Translated by Jessica Moore
Next come the irreversible rails, laying out the countryside, unfolding, unfolding, unfolding Russia, pressing on between latitudes 50掳 N and 60掳 N, and the guys who grow sticky in the wagons, scalps pale beneath the tonsure, temples glistening with sweat, and among them Aliocha, twenty years old.
Translated by Sorcha de Br煤n
This day, forever framed by briny gorse / A queerness hangs in the shoreline air / Looking back to Ballythaidhg and a summer day there
By Pierre Haroche
When the world was young / Places did not exist / Earth heaven ocean / Stood side by side / In every direction / Humans lived all together…
Translated by Brendan Freely
鈥淐orpses,鈥 said the man, 鈥渢he corpses of soldiers who don鈥檛 want to be buried in Europe, who want to have their eternal rest in Asia, on Muslim soil…”
Translated by Hiroaki Sato
The green of the cypresses being so dark. . . . The island of death, is, that, the island of poets? / The noble (poet鈥檚) fury. Just when the evening glow enwraps the world in darkness
Translated by Anca Roncea
on the first day we were met by a dying child. basking in the sun, sitting
on a manhole cover. around, there were three other children: one with
a torn eye, one with dermatitis and an ear torn off and another very
pale, soaked in blood.
Translated by Nina Bogin
In immense rooms, straw mattresses are spread out on the floor. There are collective showers and a vast dining hall.
Translated by听Hope Campbell Gustafson
When I ask my mother what happened to my father, she says that there鈥檚 been war in our country for fifteen years and as far as she knows he could be dead. She says it with a coldness that upsets me, so I immediately stop asking questions.
By Samina Hussain
It suddenly occurred to her that the tawa had been wrapped in a red and white cloth when it made its first journey to England with her all those years ago.
Translated by Sonia Alland and Richard Jeffrey Newman
To save me from the sea, / perhaps a verse, / perhaps some clear words, / are all I have. / Their value / is my entire life.
Translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi
The women of Totope treated Ada as though she had emerged from Mami Ashitey鈥檚 own loins. In their eyes, her daily floggings were glowing proof of familiarity and love.
Translated by Nhlanhla Maake
When you are standing on the bank of a river, you see yourself reflected twice, my friend.
Translated by Niina Pollari
That spring you met with national mourning, and your capital turned gray. /听You looked at your spouse in the coffin and understood
Translated by Yardenne Greenspan
Shauli came home that weekend. I was astonished when he appeared in the doorway with his uniform and rifle. I hadn鈥檛 seen him in two weeks…
Translated by Katie Whittemore
There is a small plastic horse in the corner of the modest fenced-in yard. It looks like it鈥檚 been there for eternity, yet it鈥檚 not actually old. That particular corner is the only part of the yard that has been conserved as a garden, that wasn鈥檛 sealed with cement and tile and made into a patio.
Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop
They were men who did nothing but walk walk walk. They were big, they were bearded, they wore leather caps and long raincoats…
Translated by Imogen Taylor
Let me start this story with a confession: I can鈥檛 pronounce my own name. For as far back as I can remember, I have felt uncomfortable introducing myself to people.
Translated by Nermin Menemencio臒lu
My mother was on a rampage again today. My father鈥檚 been fired, she carried on endlessly about it. 鈥淗e crosses swords with the bosses, talks back to them, as if there鈥檚 some mansion…
Translated by Alex Zucker
I had a suitcase, that鈥檚 it. My mother鈥檚 old suitcase with wheels, the one she used to take with her jetting around the Old World for work, till the doctor made her stop flying.
Translated by Valerie Miles
The sudden commotion, the sound of the motor, they displace you, leaving me alone; I concentrate on the movement of my hands now, gripping the wheel…
Translated by Yardenne Greenspan
I returned to Sobibor to dig. Really dig, with a hoe, and with my hands, on my knees, mining for bits of bone, collecting pins and buttons left behind by the dead.
Translated by Victor Meadowcroft and Anne McLean
Mothers stay with their children during the first years, and then, when the children can 鈥 apparently 鈥 defend themselves, they release them, they cast them into the naked tumult, and forget them. I鈥檝e seen mothers who despair at having to provide for their children, letting out huge yawns while contemplating them.
Translated by Megan McDowell
She started to feel bad when her brother left. Her brother said he loved her, but it wasn鈥檛 true, because he left unapol-ogetically, claiming that he had to go. Had to?
Translated by Izidora Angel
Naya and I have been living together since we were born. First in the Home, then in the attic room we shared in the Reduta neighborhood. She was given up for adoption as a three-day-old baby.
Translated by Sverre Lyngstad
This was how Bj酶rn Hansen鈥檚 existence had shaped up. This was his life. At Kongsberg. With Turid Lammers, this woman he had to live with because he feared he would otherwise regret
Translated by Emma Ramadan
Concrete’s no job for sissies.听Maybe that鈥檚 why our father decided, soon as we were old enough, my little sis and I, to educate us in cement, concrete, and casing.
Translated by Lytton Smith
I went out to the Kringils谩rrani reserve while it still existed and was able to experience firsthand this magical world Helgi wrote about.
Translated by Will Firth
Now, a year and a half after Alija鈥s funeral, I stood in the courtyard in front of the house where I grew up. I tried to sing Morrissey鈥s 鈥Late Night, Maudlin Street鈥 in my head…
Translated by Sasha Dugdale
I must have been about twelve. I was hunting around for some-thing interesting to look at. There was plenty of interesting stuff: with every death a pile of new objects appeared in our apartment, deposited just as they were, trapped in a sudden end state, because their previous owner, the only person who could have freed them, was no longer among the living.
By Judith Schalansky
In the evening they are hungry and restless. No meat for days. No hunting since they themselves were captured. Instincts worn down by captivity until they lie bare like gnawed bones.
Translated by Geoffrey Brock
Behold a uniform man /听behold a desert soul /听an impassive mirror for the world /听Sometimes I wake and join forces and possess /听The rare good that grows
Translated by Jane B. Greene
His path led him first through sparse woods where the tall grass, interspersed with clumps and clusters of gentians, came up above his knees, then over upland pastures.
Translated by Olivia Baes
[The fog] had taken shape little by little, rising from the bottom of the gorge like water does in a basin. Strangled between boulders, the great rumble of water filled the air…
Translated by Stephen Twilley
They move slowly, lazily; move their arms or turn their back by swiveling their chest, their head immobile, with the lazy litheness of reptiles.
Translated by Katie Whittemore
In any case, the woods are forbidden. Supposedly, they鈥檙e dangerous. Not because of animals or the rough terrain, but the possibility of vagabonds, thieves, terrorists: people who want to blow up what this world is becoming.
Translated by Saskia Vogel
My body clung to me like something foreign鈥攁 sticky, itchy rubber suit; but no matter how much I scratched and scraped at it, it was where it was.
Translated by Angela Rodel
We danced through the Videnov financial Crisis as well, the protests, the harsh hyperinflation that bled our parents dry.
Translated by Daniella Zamir
The sidewalk was cleansed of the blood. Rivers of rain, water hoses, and street sweepers joined forces to scrub the surface after the last remnant was removed.
Translated by Paul Wilson
And sure enough, Blackie stopped paying attention to me,听and then she began clawing at me and I had to take a rag, 补苍诲听then a blanket, and hold her down.
Translated by Kristina Andersson Bicher
I searched for a climbing tree / to fall out of. You were stepping / right into grief. Your err补苍诲听 / was to be overgrown. Become grief. / Cold grief. I fell. Soft / as an apple.
Translated by Heather Cleary
The characteristic scent of Buenos Aires, a mix of aquatic plants and the local soil, which鈥攁s many have told me and I鈥檝e also read鈥攕till filters through the streets on the breeze, was an incipient aroma slowly rising off the river to form waves of disparate and paradoxically incomplete smells that morning, probably due to the hour.
Translated by Tsipi Keller
A pointless day in Brindisi. A terrible fatigue. Pain in my gut, and I fear that I’ll be sick throughout the trip. I’m now sitting in a restaurant…
By Maia Evrona
Daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes: / Daughter of the world sustained / on the sweat of a back in pain; / mother of a word with wings on its feet.
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet
The crooked street darkens / the city鈥檚 diseased lungs. / Drags to its entrance gates / the one unafraid of the heavens.
Translated by Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge
Four years, or nearly. The next four years of the boy鈥檚 life, which will be the most beautiful, the most marvelous. The trees were nothing. The elms and the planes and the chestnuts…
By Mark Chu
Art has a substantially higher engagement in meaning, and another term for this transfer of meaning is communication, perhaps art鈥檚 chief purpose.
Translated by Janet Louth
It seems to me that the people sitting at tables on the terraces notice me in spite of my shabby clothes. Once a woman sitting behind a tiny tea-pot eyed me from head to foot.
Translated by听Katy Derbyshire
Once tall and slim, Bassel鈥檚 body is no longer immune to time鈥檚 passing 鈥 his hair has gone grey but at least it hasn鈥檛 fallen out like most of his contemporaries鈥, his belly has grown soft and visibly convex, and his back is no longer strong and straight. A slipped disc a year ago came as a rude reminder of advancing age.
Translated by Adriana Hunter
My stepfather respected every form of authority… and it so happens he also obeyed my mother. Weak with the strong, he was quite naturally strong with the weak.
Translated by Luke Hankins
children of the fog / dense fog of those eyes gazes / intersecting / the paths of meteors
By Rachel Ingalls
They were already weighed down by an emotion that made for even greater lassitude 鈥 a kind of inertia, intermittently broken by irritable indecisiveness.
Translated by Anna Halager
Oh, my head. I let out a deep sigh and smell alcohol. My stomach roils and I heave my body out of bed, go to the bathroom. Shit, my head is about to explode. I still feel drunk. My eyes won鈥檛 focus and my legs aren鈥檛 working right. I kick the clothes I dumped on the floor because they block my way and I walk five long metres to the bathroom, my hand over my mouth.
By 夜色直播 Editors
The 夜色直播 Editors choose their favorite literary translations of 2018 from or concerning Europe.
Translated by Jennifer Russell
Daniel found her in the ground. He dug her free and brushed off the dirt. He joined the pieces, logged the pigment traces: how they were distributed across her clothes and her skin.
Translated by Peter Bachev
If she just looks long and hard enough through the grimy pane of the southern window, she is sure to see one of them returning to its nest. That鈥檚 what she鈥檚 been told…
Translated by Diana Thow
The only illusion is that there鈥檚 a road to follow to an end: the hallway inhabits a closed door hourly. The mystery of a dark legend buried inside a tunnel where children grow into adult visions.
Translated by Layla Benitez-James
Africa, our old and beloved continent, is an ancestral land, just like her inhabitants. Africa is the beginning of everything.
Translated by Mirza Puri膰
Under a stolen car the world will shrink down to a single truth, and then I鈥檒l encourage / the bullet I鈥檇 spat out into your lung.
Translated by Rachael Daum
Someday it will be enough. / I鈥檒l write a poem, / the words will spill all over your street / and you鈥檒l slip / and fall straight into my arms my shackles / they鈥檙e learning to be gentle / by way of drunkenness,
By Sylvia Beato-Davis
sleep without touching & in the morning, you ask what is the matter., but nothing is ever the matter until the tea kettle struggles to sing. i dig to remember the ardor of dreamlife, putting the wrapped stick of butter near the flame to melt.
Translated by Mirza Puri膰
They鈥檝e brought us to the front line. Mud and fog everywhere. I can barely see the man in front of me. We almost hold onto each other鈥檚 belts lest we get lost. We pass between burning houses. The file trudges on along rickety fences. The mud sticks to our boots, stretches like dough.
Translated by听Jeff Diteman
鈥淓xcellent work,鈥 says the raspy-voiced, pock-faced man, as he holds out a copy of Spain: One Year of Dictatorship, 鈥渞eally excellent.”
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole
It was hot, a damp hot hell, sweat emerged from all my pores. I began excreting smells, how strange, as though something within me were starting to mold, an extraordinary fromage, as though I smelled of my eyeballs, which bulged and welled with what seemed a sort of slime, a turbidity likely rising up from my loins, a twinge from the groin that brushed my heart, stinging; it dug slowly into my brain, but I hadn鈥檛 felt its onset.
Translated by Celia Hawkesworth and Ellen Elias-Bursac
My mother collects other people鈥檚 deaths, rattling them mournfully like coins in a piggy bank.听鈥淒id you know Petrovi膰 died?鈥澨齛sks Mother over the phone.
And to think he鈥檇 expected them to rally round at the first puff of smoke from his cigar! That, whatever the circumstance, whatever the temptations, it was to him they would turn, him they would support with their powerful young love.
叠测听Olga Sezneva
I check myself in the mirror one last time. Black sweater, high neck, navy blue pants that you won鈥檛 see under my long apron. Dark-frame glasses. City smart, I鈥檇 say, no different from that mevrouw I saw selling gloves in E*.
Translated by听Susanna Nied
When I was nine years old, the world too was nine years old. At least there was no difference between us, no opposition, no distance. We just tumbled around from sunrise to sunset, earth and body as like as two pennies. And there was never a harsh word between us, for the simple reason that there were no words at all between us; we never uttered a word to each other, the world and I.
叠测听Layla Benitez-James
I wanted to unequivocally condemn police violence while simultaneously feeling a knee jerk aversion to any movement working under a shared idea of nationalism.
By Ken White
I forget nothing / think of a curse / triple it and still / you鈥檙e nowhere near / all braids evenly divided / from earth
By Caitlin Berrigan
Even an entirety must have an edge. Just as the continents drifted before, leaving a line against water: California.
Translated by Christiana Hills
This isn鈥檛 exactly how Tristan tells his story to Dumestre. He doesn鈥檛 tell him everything. He doesn鈥檛 use words like 鈥渟tammer鈥 or 鈥渁rrogance.鈥
Translated by Andrea Rosenberg
Javier eyed his father鈥檚 invulnerable back as the old man, sitting up in the bow, received the morning full on his face.听His father was skinnier and shorter than Javier, and he was wearing a polo shirt that had started out red but had long since faded.
Translated by Audrey Young
in that place there was a woman who did not want to have children听from her womb. She asked the men to bring her their wives鈥 children
so she could educate them in a large house…
Translated by听Gnaomi Siemens
All over the earth are countless creatures we can never know. /听Wherever water encircles the world鈥檚 bright breast, legions /
of land-roving beasts, huge swarms of birds, crowd against / the roaring surf, the surge of the salty waves.
Translated by Will Vanderhyden
My mother鈥攌nown as 鈥淔air Sarah鈥濃攄ied during the great influenza epidemic, when I was less than a year old. I got sick too. And against all prognoses, condemned by the doctors, I survived, and no one dared call it miracle
Translated by Todd Portnowitz
nothing but iron mouth /听a chest of ash and shadow /听stiff atonal mouth /听and scattered limbs
Translated by Emma Ramadan
In an angel鈥檚 bed in a wool dress she sleeps / The house is cold the walls white like a dream / motionless death takes a seat / and for two weeks awaits the end of the temporary peace
Translated by Katrine 脴gaard Jensen
She is angry about being an export. She is angry that adoption agencies in sending as well as receiving countries make money off transnational adoption.
Translated by听Paul Cunningham
The wolf is so small / The wolf is so very small / I see the wolf die / I don鈥檛 know what to do / I see that the wolf is on the ground / I see the wolf die / I stand beside the wolf
Translated by Susanna Nied
my fathers mother kept smoking after her stroke / one side of her face was paralyzed / she could just barely hold her lips together, they werent airtight / it must have affected the strength of her smokes / i think now
Translated by Meg Matich
I invited the biologist into my back garden / he marveled at the lightbulbs / and took to dancing like a night moth
Translated by Johannes Goransson
She covers herself in down! /听defiled and stained /听Roaring silk flower /听jealous and yellow
Translated by听Julia Johanne Tolo
This is the globe. It鈥檚 blue, with green, orange, and yellow sections. Sometimes pink or red. It turns in the dark, and has two white spots. The North Pole and the South Pole. If you want to leave the globe you have to send an application to somewhere like NASA, and you鈥檒l need to be good at physics, math, and chemistry.
Translated by听Niina Pollari
She believes she鈥檚 very happy. She tells herself that a loving husband, three beautiful children, a red granny cottage in an idyllic countryside setting, and a newish Opel station wagon in the yard is exactly what she鈥檚 always wanted.
Translated by Kerri Pierce
Truth to tell, I鈥檝e always thought that, when it comes to the animal kingdom, starlings are the creatures that most resemble humans. Could be that鈥檚 just wishful thinking.
Translated by Owen Witesman
Imagine you are partially blind. Minus eleven diopters. Imagine a dark exam room at an optometrist鈥檚 office. You鈥檙e sitting in a comfortable leather chair, afraid you鈥檒l lose your sight entirely. You鈥檝e carefully placed your old glasses on the table. The plastic rims, electric-blue ten years ago, are scuffed now.
Translated by Meg Matich
The most preposterous figure in Icelandic folklore is the indomitable wife of My Dear Jon who travels to the kingdom of heaven with the soul of her husband in a sack, to smuggle him into Paradise; she鈥檚 a woman who slings insults at the saints and slut shames the Virgin Mary before Jesus Christ himself arrives at the gates of heaven to bid her, with ceremonious tact, to get lost.
Translated by听Meg Matich
Ripples in the bath. You sit / naked on the tub鈥檚 ledge, feet touch bottom, / blood drips from your nose, aquiline.
Translated by听Catherine Cobham
We love you, Europe. We love your art and hate your colonialist history, love your theatre and hate your concentration camps, love your music and hate the sound of your bombs
Translated by Meg Matich
wet paper / tangled in birch branches /听inside the window, smoking, / a woman with red hair / says to herself: / they can鈥檛 hear me anymore
Translated by Katrine 脴gaard Jensen
Rain clouds and fox traces / newly-fledged birds / a pair of rotten cherries hitting the ground / an inevitable detachment, a dry release
Translated by David M. Smith
I kept my mouth shut and realized that Stovner was a very small place, and Tante Ulrikkes vei even smaller. I realized that in Stovner, people lived in houses on one side and housing on the other, and that the two were nothing alike, something that held true for Oslo just as much as the rest of the world.
Translated by听Larissa Kyzer
My hands get no cleaner than an old bathtub. My fingernails are all clipped as short as possible, but the chemicals have managed to claw their way through the dead skin, into the bone. As if there鈥檚 no enamel.
Translated by Todd Fredson
I dream the poem of a borderless sea /听I dance a welcoming music in my skin /听first ground for any home /听while the hands of plenty the portly souls /听weave their barbed wire
叠测听Chika Unigwe
But suffering is not without its lessons. Here, she has learned thrift. Not the thriftiness of her mother back home in Nigeria who bargains for palm oil until she gets a good price, and boasts.
Translated by听Baba Badji
Here is the Sun/ Which tightens the breasts of the virgins/ Who makes the old men smile on the green benches/ Who would awaken the dead under a maternal earth.
Translated by Allison M. Charette
You cannot walk fast in Antananarivo. There鈥檚 a weight in the air, a heat that makes everything slow and viscous. There鈥檚 a constant small of noxious gas, an acid odor that gets into your lungs, infests your muscles. There鈥檚 the red dust, blackened by exhaust fumes, and the perpetual suffocation of the city, so precariously perched, so dry.
Translated by听Baba Badji
One open prism placed at random from the thistles /听and not one /听reason to live
Translated by听Hope Campbell Gustafson
Mama built our house with flamboyant tree branches and braids of palms, mixing a paste of resin, dung and red sand to protect us from water and from the monsoons.
Translated by Alice Inggs
When slavery ended/听in America a slave got/ 40 acres anna mule/ to start his life with
Translated by Cole Swensen
They have the extreme, soft, palpable, tangible sensation of glimmering each with his neck plunged in a basin of water, made artificial, they look at each other, clearly apt to scurry off, they know nothing of each other, to scrutinize, they possess the fragile, fluttering, heightened, exclamatory sensation of being able to leave at any moment, whenever they want
Translated by听Donald Nicholson-Smith
Alain leaves everything behind walking, walking toward the station… walking toward Claire, toward a happiness cold as the sun in this country.
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole
Later, to restore the sense of uniqueness, of something transcending the symphony, vocal force and splendid voices were sought after.
Translated by听Ellen Elias-Bursa膰听补苍诲听David Williams
Marlene was Polish (in age she could have been my daughter) and she occasionally cleaned my apartment for ten Euros an hour. Who knows how she鈥檇 found her way to Amsterdam and from where, but in the flood of words she showered on me in her poor, strongly Polish accented English, I remembered mention of a collective somewhere in Belgium with its leader whom she referred to, reverently, as 鈥淏aba.鈥
By Joshua Kleinberg
It鈥檚 not the threat of violence. It鈥檚 the questions I鈥檓 expected to answer before the violence that bother me. All stemming from premises I don鈥檛 agree with, but what are you going to get into a debate with a man who just caught you making out with his 鈥渄omestic partner?鈥
Translated by Daniel Evans Pritchard听
It was a time of infamy and lies. / The nation itself was dressed up / like a squalid clown to draw / attention away from our wound.
Translated by听Katherine M. Hedeen
anima of a dismantled marine among the poppies / and the eternal snows south of Kandahar anima of a banker
By 夜色直播 Editors
The 夜色直播 Editors choose their favorite literary translations of 2017.
Translated by Angela Rodel
I can see her clearly now, wandering through the New York dusk on Christmas Eve. She grabs a cab, and in less than an hour she is standing in front of an entryway in Brooklyn.
Translated by听Izidora Angel
The chains they took off, the ropes they left on, and they forced him, bound, into the car
Translated by Angela Rodel
Your thighs 鈥 acacia / White, with a pleasant scent / Able to endure low / and high temperatures
By Elitza Kotzeva
Memories of moments from my childhood days / carefully sealed in the sarcophagus of / forlorn history / forgotten history / forbidden history
By Elena Alexieva
I still can鈥檛 get used to living on ground level. The fact that from my kitchen window I see the people walking between the apartment blocks almost in their actual size keeps astonishing me. Living on the ground floor means we have no terrace. But we do have bars on the windows which we didn鈥檛 put there.
Translated by听Ekaterina Petrova
Zhoro 鈥渢he Bird鈥 was a Bulgarian immigrant in Melbourne. He was born in a village near the town of Plovdiv, where, going off in pursuit of his entire family鈥檚 happiness, he had left behind a wife and a daughter.
Translated by听Donald Nicholson-Smith
She lives alone in a smoke-filled apartment. Now and again a glass of wine may be seen–hers, or that of a casual visitor. A bird lives there too, looking out of the window for hours, indifferent, distant. One day she decides to bring some plant life into her home to freshen things up…
Translated by Alex Zucker
Don鈥檛 stink and watch your weight. Those are the most important resolutions I know of. Every morning I plop myself down in front of the mirror and stare into my face, just in case it might finally tell me something I don鈥檛 know. It stares right back, as if expecting the same from me.
叠测听Stacy Mattingly
In the fall of 2015, as people fleeing Syria and elsewhere for Europe were being stopped en masse at borders, two writers鈥 collectives to which I belong 鈥 one based primarily in Sarajevo, one in Atlanta 鈥 decided to engage in a collaborative artistic response. We called it The Borders Project.
叠测听Ne膽la 膯emanovi膰
My cousin promised me a job in Austria. At the moment he told me he had managed to sort something out, I was glaring at a wall plastered with posters of nature, some of them faded and some coffeestained. The entire apartment was begrimed with the previous tenants鈥 addictions鈥攆rom caffeine to domestic violence.
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
I untwist my headphones at the bus stop,
hysterically cussing, hands shaking
with the fear of the roar of the yellow bus
叠测听Suzanne Mozes
Ignorance and apathy have no boundaries,鈥 David said. I raised the half-empty bottle of Evan Williams. He nodded at it but refused my boyfriend鈥檚 invitation to stay for dinner, saying he would 鈥渓eave with this one last thing so y鈥檃ll can eat.鈥
Surely Mama must realize that the little ones are scared and that we older ones know she鈥檚 lying. We can鈥檛 tell her so because the little ones would be even more scared.
By Daniela Valenta
It鈥檚 not that my father was a gambling man; after all, he never entered a casino in his life. He just had a way with cards and thought it would be a pity not to make the most of it, I guess. In the Yugoslavia of the 1970s, groups would gather in homes over a game of cards, playing as day turned slowly into night and night gave way to the next day, until one person finally left with a nice profit.
叠测听Kate Tuttle
If we were really Hansel and Gretel, we鈥檇 walk through wolf-filled woods, the sky dark, a bright moon overhead. Here, we wander amid a bright thicket of beds and dressers, desks and chairs.
Translated by Mirza Puri膰
He was walking in his neighbourhood, looking around. The streets were incredibly empty. He didn鈥檛 think it was possible not to see anyone that day. Unusually, not even his neighbour Mara had left her flat to do her morning shopping. She never missed her morning walk. Menso knew this because he preferred spying on his neighbours to watching breakfast television.
Translated by听Isabel Fargo Cole
One reason for my forays to the far side of town was the worry over what was to become of me.
Translated by听Miranda Richmond Mouillot
I鈥檓 not going to hide at all, my friend. The ones who hide are always the ones they find. I鈥檝e had smallpox twice; the Nazis just make it a third time.
Translated by听Deborah Smith
It began in Mao鈥檚 room. Hazy, formless, faint things, things that were neither light nor shade, yet at the same time the illegitimate children of both,听a moment of glittering black and dark…
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
Two sentences, the house鈥檚 number, don鈥檛 waste them, keep them
for a black hour.
Translated by听Celia Hawkesworth
On Saturday, November 19, 2002, sixty people incarcerated in a camp for illegal immigrants sew their lips together. Sixty people with their lips sewn reel around the camp, gazing at the sky. Small muddy stray dogs scamper after them, yapping shrilly. The authorities keep assiduously postponing consideration of their applications for leave to remain.
By Christopher Impiglia
For my great-grandparents, as it was for most immigrants of their generation, the past was a hindrance. It was all about the future. A new life with new appliances and new cars and new names. Nothing old, as the old carried with it the weight of oppressive regimes, poverty, and social immobility.
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
The smell of apple cider vinegar pervades the room, starting from the clean, warm window panes, making its way into the perfectly tightened coverlet on the bed, the freshly brushed carpet, and one suitcase.
By Rachael Maddux
At the Pawleys Island General Store, I bought a postcard of a ghost. He stood atop a dune in a wide-brimmed hat and overcoat, one arm raised towards the ocean, his body half-disappeared into the overcast sky. Some stories held that the Gray Man was the ghost of a colonial man who had been thrown from his horse and drowned in the marsh.
Translated by听Susan Bernofsky
One Thursday in late August, ten men gather in front of Berlin鈥檚 Town Hall. According to news reports, they鈥檝e decided to stop eating. Three days later they decide to stop drinking too. Their skin is black. They speak English, French, Italian, as well as other languages that no one here understands. What do these men want? They are asking for work. They want to support themselves by working.
Translated by听Gaye Kynoch
The days and weeks in Lisbon, the clear, higher, harder light out here by the coast, the slightly forsaken haziness of the city, a forgotten region of outermost Europe, the sound of the street-cleaning trucks advancing slowly through the streets behind Pra莽a do Rossio in the last hour before daybreak, like big beetles snorting hoarsely in the dust of the strangely quiet city…
叠测听Mina Hamedi
I saw him walking, black hair in knots and a bottle with the cap open held by his side. Leaning over the top, he brought his bottle, took a sip and stared at us.
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
Tell me!
between sleeplessness and dreamlessness
are the steps too tall too tight for the feet
swollen from roaming and do the eyeballs swell
from crossing gazes eye over eye
By Melanie Jordan
Three quarters of the way through, this dude
enters. Every time, he pops up like Mephistopheles
through a clunky trapdoor, and I don鈥檛 even know
if I鈥檓 inviting him
By Chris Blackman
Hope is but a greeting card, it occurs to me,
while in a cab barreling across the Triborough Bridge
and it might be important enough to get this maxim
tattooed on my neck in case I forget this simple truth
and lest ideas otherwise become more obtrusive,
more incessant, but these are just the ugly thoughts
to which I am chemically prone, when I鈥檓 feeling morbid鈥
叠测听Stacy Mattingly
We鈥檇 already shown our passports at the border鈥攊t was still Czechoslovakia-Germany then. We鈥檇 kept the lights on in our compartment, waiting for the guard. Drab uniform. Angular face. Documents, he鈥檇 said. The Cold War was basically dead. Still, I could imagine.
By Michael Juliani
As the fishermen strangle cod
out on the wet docks our refrigerator arrives
and today is a warm sleeved gust
passing through the afternoon
a somnolent incident of pleasure
叠测听Theophilus Kwek
Now that we live in the same house, it sits on a glass shelf in the hallway, a dark lens winking when the lights come on. A cataract of dust, invisible except at certain angles…
Translated by听Rachel Hildebrandt and听Alexandra Roesch
White swathes of steam float across the deck. It wreaks. Someone has puked into the swimming pool, and fibrous chunks float on the surface. Leg of duck in a truffle reduction鈥攖he Chef鈥檚 daily special. As though in slow motion, the girl straightens up, staggers away, reeling between stacks of deck chairs and disappears into the haze.
Translated by听Katrine 脴gaard Jensen
I put all the little
orb-shaped worlds of glass back
in their cosmic framings, and everything becomes everything.
Translated by Erika Luckert
In her bedroom, where nobody would intrude, she imagined herself powerful, penis in hand, victor over all the rest and defying humiliation.
叠测听Alison Moore
He is not in the bedroom. She can hear the shower running in the bathroom, can hear him singing in there. She would prefer not to have to talk to this man who keeps calling her Ester as if he knows her. She is still annoyed with him for being so late and not even apologizing. She is obliged to feed the man 鈥 she wants to feed him, she always wants to feed men 鈥 but she would be pleased to get away without having to engage with him.
By Selma Asoti膰
You are
mother鈥檚 madness
stirred in a teacup.
Translated by听Emily Gogolak
The elusive gazes of the men, the slightly aghast looks from the women, upon the arrival of this rider, all to suggest that he was a dreadful and dreaded being.
By听Esther Lee
Geometry shapes you into compliance, quiet desperation a spiderweb spreading over a face much
like your own.
By Marina Alagi膰-Bowder
The March sunshine is clear as a bell, but there鈥檚 a bitter edge to the glassy Adriatic waters. Matt and I follow the children down to the shore to watch them dip their toes and scream, 鈥淗ladno-o-o!鈥 The initial H adds to the shivering.
Translated by听Dong Li听
days are placid, like an olive grove
spread upon the slopes, not
too many high rises, not too much dust
or too many nouveau-riche neighbors;
Translated by听Jethro Soutar and Annie McDermott
You would鈥檝e come home and told me all about it, filled with enthusiasm and doubtless in fits of laughter. If the conversation had ever taken place.
Translated by Mirza Puri膰
All the pain we inflicted on our mother began with our birth. We hurt her when we were being born, and we hurt her by being born. Why people come uninvited, she never understood. She invited her first husband into her life. Me she didn’t invite.
叠测听L.S. McKee
The doctors will search
for imperfection,
will root out the cause
of tumor or freckle
with misshapen borders.
Translated by Mirza Puri膰
The three frozen fingers on her hand
were like knives in my kneecaps.
Translated by James McFarlane and Kathleen McFarlane
On a calm winter morning, on 4th January, 1761, a company of five men, clad for a journey, were rowed out from the Tollbooth into the shipping roads off Copenhagen.
By Charmaine Craig
Khin had seen him before, the young officer. She had noticed his hands, strong and clenched by his sides, and the restless way he charged from one end of the seaport to the other.
Translated by Megan Matich
There are deep-cut valleys,
narrow and untraveled.
No grass grows here,
only ashy gray moss
Translated by听Jan Pytalski
The city was rebuilt to restore its previous look, sometimes down to exact details, following a naive belief that that would turn it back into what it used to be before the war. It was an exercise in fidelity without purpose, an empty gesture of men in love with history.
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
for breakfast I鈥檝e had
a small coniferous forest
and in it a squirrel
I pressed him on a serviette
stored him between two leaves of newspaper
Translated by James Sutherland-Smith
Crystals grown too quickly to champ with teeth
scratch throat. with narrow fingers across
canvas voiceless retrace twists and turns.
Translated by听Frederika Randall
They caught her because she made a mistake. For months she had sailed right through their nets with her false passport, her bleached hair, her little heart-shaped medal reworked as a cross, her Polish spoken like a Pole and even her school-taught German spoken badly as only the Poles in Slesia did.
Translated by Michael Hofmann
On my lap the animal knows neither fear nor persecution. It feels happiest when pressed against me; it is loyal to the family that has nurtured it.
Translated by Kirkwood Adams听补苍诲听Elizabeth Clark Wessel
Ask: the hum of branches ringing in the body, a nervous shimmer, change inside a frequency.
Translated by听Frederika Randall
He didn鈥檛 want to drop dead in that room. In the dark. Alone, without a helping hand: it was pure misery. The sound of his breathing did not seem to be him, but a machine.
Translated by Monika Cassel
The linden tree has lost all its leaves
and nothing is left of the summer but
the wish to stroke old Germany鈥檚
head one more time
Translated by听Janet Livingstone
The river draws closer and closer to the stream of gawking people. They jump onto the sandbags so they can see themselves in it. And at night they dream dreams on the shore. Dreams in which clouds of dust whirl behind herds of galloping animals.
Translated by听Sean Bye
It was right before the war, and we鈥檇 put all the poverty and deprivation of the Great Depression behind us. The whole economy was doing better, hardly anyone was unemployed, they鈥檇 get jobs building the Autobahn or could get permits to work abroad. The craftspeople in town got plenty of commissions.
By
I was a sort of upstairs-downstairs person in the crew. My role as journalist and anthropologist afforded me precious access to both worlds.
Translated by Bill Johnston
I鈥檇 like to say鈥攖o her, to both of them鈥
let鈥檚 lie down beneath the grass, lie in the shade
of dried-out ships, let matters of fate be left
to those plane trees, I鈥檇 like to say, look over there!
Translated by听C.J. Collins
I took the big bag that I had inherited from my grandfather down from the attic. It was brightly colored like a storm of rainbows. I hoisted it onto my back and went out into the street. I closed my eyes and began to choose samples at random from everything that was inside: humans and stones and dust and flowers and wind and the past and the present and the future.
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
My beautiful triune people, you鈥檙e fairest
in the morning when you gush forth
from your colon-colonies
and your public transport vans
鈥 thank you.
Translated by Sherilyn Hellberg
The face, the voice, the hands press against the wall. Celestine up in the south-facing attic, in front of the stained mirror鈥攁nd there is also a dried wreath there. In the darkness inside the wall, a glimpse of Celestine鈥檚 eyes. In one eye a nettle grows. The forest around the castle sparkled like silver, carrying Celestine鈥檚 name within it. She is furious; she hunts down the guests at the hotel when they sleep. She slides down the corridors. She licks their faces. She licks the sleep out of their eyes. She cries no no when the wall closes in on her.
Translated by听Angela Rodel
I鈥檒l try to introduce to you the six hunters individually and I鈥檒l start with him, since he was the reason they set off in that miserable weather to track wolves.
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
You鈥檙e always on the edge between two chasms, cradle-ladles,
as your limping legs laze on the wall.
There are wider spaces in you, their evening chill
callously presses your palms
as if to pierce your insides, spill into the night,
into the rivers above the roofs, into the rotten orchards of the sky.
Translated by听Eliza Marciniak
Cold surfaces of mirrors stubbornly hold their form.
Beyond the looking-glass, atoms have combined
into impenetrable worlds.
I found warm newborns in the rabbit-hole.
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
When we wet the bed
for three nights in a row
they put a shroud
over our heads
and brought the lead
to our eyes
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
I鈥檝e got all the necessary qualifications to become stateless I鈥檝e got
an expired passport of a state which no longer exists and a birth certificate
from a city in a country no one will recognise
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
beggars at my door
I鈥檓 not opening
the spyhole is a safe space
a worldview
in my fridge
fungi and mould
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
Says
All things
When you lay them
One across the other
Make a cross
Only a man
Dropped as a perpendicular
Onto another man
Translated by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping
Nights on the riverbank were terrifying: it was as if the violent wind would blow the boxes into the river at any moment. Mixed with this strong wind were many howling wolves.
By Elena Lappin
No one except my brother seemed to be concerned about how this bombshell was affecting me. My parents were the core, I was the periphery. Whose story was this, really?
Translated by George Henson
I was in Vienna this year, after a twelve-year absence. My arrival coincided with a mass rally of three hundred thousand people who protested against the return of Nazism to the country, precisely in Heroes鈥 Square, the same one where one million Austrians frenziedly cheered Hitler.
Translated听by Saskia Vogel
Her fatigue was bright and jagged. It rained down on her, dispersing her thoughts until they were but white noise. She had no idea how long she鈥檇 slept last night.
By Marjorie Agos铆n
Suddenly,
That night became longer still.
Around us the silence turned dark as well,
An opaque hue of gray without blue.
Bewildered girls asked what had happened.
All their mothers knew to do was play with their disheveled hair.
By Leonora Carrington
Various events were taking place in the outside world: the collapse of Belgium, the entry of the Germans in France. All of this interested me very little and I had no fear whatsoever.
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Mudugan was a typical village of thieves, built in the middle of the forest in a gap that barely deserved to be called a clearing, so tightly did the trees encircle the log houses. There weren鈥檛 any paths that had been marked to get there and it was inaccessible to anyone who didn鈥檛 know exactly where the ravines and undergrowth were. That was where Umrug Batyushin learned to live his life as a self-sufficient child, there where he learned to shoot rifles, to carve up elk, and endure cold and hardship, as well as bear the howling of the wolves…
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
My husband is burly, and when he walks, it’s as if his steps are yawning. He stumbles over me as if over a pet. I sometimes hide behind a tree and wait for him to turn around. Or leave. If we’re going to a birthday party, I’m the one who wraps and carries the present. If he’s had a lot of wine, the room takes on a smell听which makes me put on my shoes and walk up and down the street.
Translated by听Masha Udensiva-Brenner
I want to scream something
Into its dark, open jaws,
To bring my ear to it,
Press up against it with my tremulous heart.
Translated by Chenxin Jiang
Europe is disintegrating, the old lady is falling apart. She recently appeared at the Museum Festival with a terrible heap of jewelry around her neck; she’d just dyed her hair blond; above her fake gold necklace hung her wretched, worn face, and then she laughed, walked up to the bar, embraced a tall young man and kiss him artfully.
By David Constantine
During the funeral, and after it when the mourners came back to her house, Katrin continued in the almost rapturous state she had been lifted into by the last hours of Eric鈥檚 life. It was over, accomplished, her strength had sufficed. And now meticulously she would attend in every detail to every thing that needed to be done. She allowed advice, but followed it her way; help, but she directed it. She accepted condolences, and herself extended them to whoever had been saddened by Eric鈥檚 death.
Translated听by Julia Sanches
She continues to divine the future鈥攎ore so than the past, which she has almost completely forgotten. She has herself turned into Linka, the gypsy from Debrecen. Her Jewishness is a mixture of faith and superstition; a religion she has partly invented herself.
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet
At the time I had no answering machine, so
I couldn鈥檛 call myself. Ludicrous, perhaps,
even morbid, how secure it made me feel to know
at any time I could hear my own voice. There is a voice, however
mechanical, which is mine.
Translated听by Andr茅 Naffis-Sahely
Venice multiplies itself and refracts, like light bounces off the shards of a mirror that has broken into a thousand pieces.
Translated by Kelsi Vanada
love鈥檚 cry lingers incomplete like a half-articulated sneeze love is a half-sneeze cut off by another sneeze creaking a reflex scandalously i rest my skull on your sweet skull a phonograph before the sonata in C major accentuates and duplicates the cravings and increases wellbeing and exists
Translated by K.T. Billey
Gray carpet and gray chairs and
gray walls and gray table and
gray cocktail glasses
and gray fax machine and gray
door frame and gray neighbors
Translated by Derick Mattern
Once poetry was like a faithful hound
whenever I was sad he鈥檇 sense it
and come comfort me
Translated by Susan Bernofsky
As soon as he entered the sleepers鈥 realm, the air around him grew sharply colder, with glittering silvery particles of light falling all around him. He watched the miniature flakes floating, they danced, liberated from gravity, yet still went on falling: falling ever farther until at last they alighted on the frozen earth and disappeared.
Translated by Martin Aitken
We come no closer, only the opposite鈥攚e are moving away.听Moving backwards,听losing the pores of the woman鈥檚 skin, we lose the pores, the fair down of听her upper lip that you discovered, the lines of her skin reminding you of听some other age鈥攜outh, funnily enough, that couldn鈥檛 quite be placed.
