“She spends her days tending the grapes, and she runs a little gift shop in the village…Now that she’s simplified her relationships with people, she seems even healthier, even more herself.” (fiction)
Category: Translations
“‘with boys comes a lot of stress. You worry about how you can buy him his own place, or you worry about who he’ll bring into your house.'” (fiction)
“The last traces / of what I have lived, / of what I have loved, / are vanishing at the mercy of the wind.” (poetry)
“it’s still spring in Rome, a perennial incitement to live. We meet in Piazza Cavour, me with my selfish FFP3 mask, Luisa with her altruistic blue cloth one.”
“I dreamed the sun, very low, / painting me a mustache of sweat and coal.”
“the city’s landmarks / are illuminated / by your stopover in my thoughts” (TCTC Translations)
Many are drawn to martins covered with feathers that seem to absorb ash, stained with orange glass shards. (Translations)
“Apparently to be a poet—dogmatic on the outside/and lacking conviction within//is a hell one can leave/but doesn’t” (Translations)
“but the sea swoons/with delight in holy purity/but sand breaks the stone/that covers my face” (Translations)
A response to some of the fun and humor and movement of the poem. (Translations)
“The White Envelope (1975)” by Catherine Cusset, translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer
All night long, Elena tossed and turned on her thin mattress and listened to…the coughs, the laughs, the sobs, and the whispers of all these poor people who had the same hopes as they did.
Greek amphorae sprouting branches in the toboroches/ and Dante’s whole paradise embodied in a dragon fruit
Cut right in the middle
And not one protection/ has come to them/ nothing sound.
“‘Chicago has nothing to be ashamed of in comparison with New York.'” (1918)
In the city that some used to call the Seattle of Italy, nowadays you can only overdose on poetry.
“The Last Moments of a Brave Mouse” by Ahmed Shaker, translated from the Arabic by Essam M. A-Jassim
The mouse saw the Ghost of Death approach him as the humans struck him with the shoe, stick, broom, and a series of quick kicks.
“Exchange of Glances”
“The Creature”
In December 1989 in Romania, the crowds spilling into the streets chanted: ‘We will die and we will be free!’
The day before the world was supposed to end, Kasumi woke up in the morning and slipped into her school uniform as usual. She had nothing else to do. Besides, she didn’t dislike school. On the other hand, her best friend, Tomo-chan, had left for a trip a few days earlier, saying she would spend time with her boyfriend. By this time, she would have lost her virginity.
Poems by Laura Cesarco Eglin, translated from the Spanish by Catherine Jagoe and Jesse Lee Kercheval
“Index Finger for Touching”
“It Takes Strength”
“Staying Connecting”
“Kite-flying”
“Love Poem”
An excerpt from Franco-Somali writer Patrick Erouart-Siad’s memoir “Villa Shamis” about his mother Shamis Siad, translated by Eliza Nichols.
