My sister wrapped her arms around me. I did not cry. I felt nothing.
(nonfiction)
Tag: translation
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Yesterday’s rosy cheeks we thought would stay. / Today our hair has turned more and still more gray.
I dreamed a lot that night, many dreams and deep dreams, and more nights followed with dreams like that.
All that’s left of the baby is the rattle. / All that’s left of the granny is her knitting.
Back then, protecting the border was about preventing people from getting out; now it means not letting anyone in…
(fiction)
When someone’s chasing you with a knife, / you just run, as someone said ages ago in a statement, / actually a manifesto demanding a person be face to face / with the words or they won’t count.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“She washed her hair and chose the most suitable clothes her closet would allow, the kind of outfit she imagined the woman who headed up the office of human resources would want to see.”
(fiction)
I blossomed into violet / flames while my / Self, in silent flight / within my soul, / drank and sang / until dawn.
I’m paranoid, I’m chronically fatigued. / Neither Freud nor Jung can help. / Lord, grind us with your palette knife down into / the dark, into the soil.
(poetry)
The only language you know / the form you know as love / as one, / complete / complete.
(translations)
I don’t trap my dreams in books / you might as well store fire in paper
(translation)
But those who press the grapes now, / who toil from morning till night, / they’ve disowned us…
✶✶✶✶
He’s standing around and a girl in a red coat makes him think of me. Or a French bulldog, that I would run to pat. Or a scent makes him turn back.
(fiction)
in silence, those dark minutes of recess when they stomp on my shadow with their hyena / laughter
(poetry)
It was late in the evening and dark, the dark river with its lights passing by, reflections from the Seine travelling across the ceiling, sliding along the walls.
That day has never ended. / The fence he built is still new.
Entangled one with another they watch us. / The good died too soon.
(translations)
O, old ocean! the river has mixed with your waters / where I so often bathed
“I look up to those people who have nothing at all but their own body, which is used to the core: the rickshaw pullers, the sweepers, the mothers in rags…”
(fiction)
“It felt good to be in their brainy female world, which defied the patriarchal Latin culture under Franco.”
(nonfiction)
The roof soars so high above the sky’s hanging at arm’s length / And you, dear, are now drunk on a thousand glasses of wine
He demands I be a man. What is it to be a man? I ask him.
“for just a moment I lived / through what they may have felt”
He remains in place next to the stove, watching everyone, observing their flaws.
(fiction)
Four poems by Alain Mabanckou, translated from the French (Congo-Brazzaville) by Nancy Naomi Carlson
He rejects the idea that Humankind descended from the apes, otherwise why has he, the gorilla, remained at the animal stage?
(poetry)
“If I go into the forest, I can hear the birds and crunching of the leaves. It’s about the sound of the whole forest, not isolating the sounds,” Janice Lee tells interviewer Margaret Juhae Lee.
“wind unravels the light / seeks a face / for the coming storms”
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“I fell in love with a sweet-lipped / bitter-eyed / girl from Balkh”
(poetry)
“Why don’t we come to an agreement then? I’ll buy the alcohol if you finally stop working.” Hassan said as he sipped his Scotch and watched her with his psychologist’s stare. She had the uneasy feeling she was a frog in his pot, and he was slowly turning up the heat.
(fiction)