Translation
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Four Poems by Andrea Jurjević Artwork by Kirstin Mitchell
She Floated Away
After Hüsker DüA mob of slam dancers hurls and shoves in the mosh pit of the park fountain—all this furor, thrust-riot, all this outage, the ridding
of the white corset. Under the cankered poplar a man rests his stiff leg across his lover’s knees, leans into her narrow shoulder and scratches a rough scratch in the V of her thighs—
the axis of her body, black as the tail of a swallow, forked as a dowsing rod.
Yet her gaze is fixed on the fountain,
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Global Voices Interviews *Poland* Bronka Nowicka and Katarzyna Szuster in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
The Polish version of this interview appeared in Biuro Literackie on 23 March 2020
Every so often a writer comes along who shows us what literature can and perhaps is meant to do — offering not so much a different perspective as a different way of seeing. A writer whose work inhabits a space undetermined by convention, trends, topics of current interest, unafraid to put aside the noise of daily life and explore the unnoticed – unseen because ignored – life that is nevertheless fully within our grasp.
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“Regnum” A short story by Bronka Nowicka (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster) Artwork by Lula Bajek
Regnum
Mad Mary, Ursula, insane Nina, haunted Agnes, guide me. Let me stick my hands in the pockets of your housecoats, where the keys are nestled in the bundles of your handkerchiefs. Let me steal them and set the door to the kingdom ajar.
At night Nina kneads bread and weeps into it. In the kitchen, the milk gives off light until she pours it into dun flour and then it goes out. The woman kneads the dough in the dark. The table squeaks,
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Five Poems from “In the morning we are glass” by Andra Schwarz (translated from the German by Caroline Wilcox Reul) Artwork by Hannu Töyrylä
In the morning we are glass
*
Am morgen sind wir aus glas
My hands reach into emptiness what is left under earth
I walk to the black mill at its edge the spring
nothing moves I still hear the grinding of wheels
the spray of water and how they revolve decades
in the millworks the building the dismantling the change
finally the child from then no one knows what might have been
every year another ring grows wolves prowl in the
forest now that I’m gone everything is large & -
Excerpts from the book length poem “Melismas” by Marlon Hacla (translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim) Artwork by Tilde Acuña
Excerpts from
Melismas
Because I had been given healing salts, objects
that bring restoration, I shall brave the ripeness
of the week for you. I will sing about strengths
that seek loneliness but capable of saving
the world from impairment caused by its own
design. I have no more use
for you but each time I discard
the list that condones your utility,
a rice paddy’s hue turns pale, blankets are suddenly blown away
to reach every layer of the sky. -
“The Lake” (parts 1 to 3 of Dead Letter Office) and “After Objects” by Marko Pogačar (translated from the Croatian by Andrea Jurjević) Photography by Dora Held
Dead Letter Office is forthcoming in March 2020 by The Word Works.
The Lake
Again that tragic
Mixing up of things and folks.
— Novica Tadić1.
I am the lake, I set out
in the morning from the slow cocoon of the sun—
sink into myself as if into a silent room or despair.
plants nest in my chest
like wading birds nest in shrubs,
the eternal choir of grass blades.
