Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art – Issue One

a journal of writing & art

issue one ✣ Winter 2011

Tongue is a journal of new writing & art publishing original poetry,essays and images that aspire to challenge comfortable gestures and distinctions.

These are translations, polyphonic exchanges across all conceivable borders—those of imagination, of language, and our inherited and enacted

worlds of joy, repression, solitude, and violence.

As an autonomous project of the pirogue collective—the arts and cultureexpression of the Goree Institute—Tongue celebrates an expansive,

poetic dialogue among communities of thought.

✣

Editors

adam wiedewitschcolin cheney

r.a. villanueva

tongueeditors@tongueoftheworld.org

✣

copyright © 2011 by island positionall rights reserved

No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever (beyond copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Law)

without permission from the publisher except in the case of briefquotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

a j o u r n a l o f w r i t i n g & a r tWinter 2011

GOREEINSTITUTE

Prelude to What Comes Next geoffrey nutter 8

Coprolite : Tornado :: Turkey Vultures : darren morris 10

The Wolf’s Dream / Intaglio alfonso d’aquino 20translation from the spanish by forrest gander

(Nightly We Are Taken) kiwao nomura 22translation from the japanese by forrest gander and kyoko yoshida

Palustrine cecily parks 26

Recent Findings idra novey 30

Situation 8 (from Provenance) claudia rankine 29

Shanxi Portfolio zhang xiao 30

Aubade with Panopticon sally wen mao 42

Three poems adam small 46translation from the kaaps by mike dickman

Four poems vénús khoury-ghata 60translation from the french by marilyn hacker

Recurrence rachel eliza griffiths 64

Maniac Mansion brian oliu 68

(from Context) birgitta trotzig 70translation from the swedish by rika lesser

Three poems nathalie handal 71

Mexican Prayers ewa chrusciel 74

Photography byrachel eliza griffiths

Contents

rachel eliza griffiths is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books/2010) and The Requited Distance(The sheep Meadow Press/2011). her next full-length collection, Mule & Pear, (New issues Poetry & Prose), waspublished this fall.

They Have Tiny Eyes That Remember Everything, rachel eliza griffiths. Photograph based on Aubade withPanopticon by Sally Wen Mao, 2011.

Prelude to What comes NextGeoFFReY NUTTeR

8

Knives may be sharpened on ivy roots,willow, and holly. Seaspray does not injuresycamore or tamarisk. Grass will growbeneath the alder, ash, plane, and sycamorebut not the aspen, beech, chestnut, and fir.Chestnut and olive never warp. The unmovingcloud that seems to billow on the cyclorama,the dream, the waking day, the rain-wet leaves.Condensation builds up on the windows.Bankrupt and in the exchequer’s black books,you’ve inscribed the Ramayana on a tetrahedronabout the size of a dreidel. It’s okay.Through the sky fall fire-threaded hatsfor rectors, plums with streaks of greenand violet, beetles with green markings.You came to her first as a child,then as a lover, then as a litigant.Is this the prelude to what comes next(low as it may be on the scale of verities)?As a ptarmigan lays aside its winter plumage,lay your burden down beneath the trees,in the cool shadow of the moss: your lifewill be there still when you awaken,like a grape-colored ribbon laid acrossthe tinted page of a book that you have closed.Then when you return, touchstone, opalof the pale, a child fully human in your wakefulness,full in your adulthood as absinthe for the weary,as fortitude for tedium, the lesser agons:we could be drinking ice wine right now,made from the grapes we left to freeze

on the silver branches at dusk. We couldbe new, beautiful, appeased, immortal.or watching the orange River thawas it flows through Mönchengladbach at dawn.

geoffrey Nutter is the author of Christopher Sunset (Wave Books, 2010), Water's Leaves & Other Poems(Winner of the 2004 Verse Press Prize) and A Summer Evening, winner of the 2001 colorado Prize (center forliterary Publishing, 2001). geoffrey currently teaches in New york city, where he lives with his wife, daughterand son.

P R e L U D e T o W h A T C o M e S N e x T ✣ 9

coprolite : tornado : : turkey Vultures :DARReN MoRRIS

10

What am I the voice says. Where am I the body replies.

Let’s begin with something known.

Archeologists found a cache of coprolite nested neat as a clutch of eggs in a layer of North American peat. The petrified excrement ranged from tiny pellets to cannonball size, resolute among the exculpated memory of our bones, proving that we walked our continent long before we guessed.

one way to view science is as a series of questions that necessitate other questions. This is the same with poems. We are asking: Isn’t this how we feel, process, live? Isn’t this us?

From our prehistoric wastewe now can guess at how we might have been, how large we might have grown, how hungry. on the night it was createdwe might guess how fullof flora and fauna heretofore undiscovered and assess how pregnant or how sick or wounded.

We can better approximate age of individual, intestinal strength, and even the amount of anxiety, and fearlessness—all from the distance at which we squatted from the fire.

The world is what we know is constantly disappearing. And this is why we sing to ourselves and move our shoulders when we weep. Beauty is what runs into machine-gun glow. What wants its good arm back, what doesn’t want to die today, but to go on, lunging forward in the dark, until it vanishes.

During World War onecoprolite held no more value than its usefulness to gunpowder, so rich was it in phosphorous.In Ipswitch, a mining operationstaked its claims, but nowthere is only its namesake street. It must have been cobbled then. Sheep would have stumbled where they crossed. old neighbors must have greeted there each to each and worried that the Germans would sweep them under. So they lingered wordlessly and smoked or talked about the river and the birds that nested on its banks, the ones who seemed to know. The world would soon be passing them.

There is some comfort thinking of the nothing we become that allows us to be all things known or considered. All things thought or whispered past even the most regular field, the last day falling

C o P R o L I T e : T o R N A D o : : T U R K e Y V U LT U R e S : ✣ 11

over the country of our sleep. The past made into coprolite, chunks of memory, perforated light, a burst before some soldier’s death.

What am I the voice says. Where am I the body replies.

The Virginia historical Societyhas been working to preserve a house. Identical to the many homesbuilt just after the Civil War, this onewas built before. Finally, they had secured enough funding to begin the careful renovation.The first order of businesswas the destruction of two blood-hooded turkey vultures who had wandered deep into its gutted cellar. old lovers, theyhad come again to nest within the ruins. Fish and Wildlife sent an agent whoby shotgun rounds, a rasher apiece, killed them where they hissed, and lurched, and spat, raking their knives across the floor.

Where they lay, nearly bodiless,a single, spotted final egg rolledunharmed between its makers. As a final indignation, the raptorswere hauled out, hoisted by their talons, and strung as warning to others who might think to take up residence there.

When I hear how they hung,wings fanning out like vanquishedsaints, a joy rises in my shoulders,because I have kept them for yearsalive in the Kansas sky drifting over an endless field where I am ten years old.

12 ✣ C o P R o L I T e : T o R N A D o : : T U R K e Y V U LT U R e S :

Typically, the vulture hunts silently, alone, just over the earth, sniffing the zones of grasses for the delicate gases of decay. I’ve seen them roadside like dogsshaking the heart from a cat, almostlike a mercy, like mourners paidto weep when a body has no other,like the women who washedthe bodies of the dead saying:

Your hands are as rods of gold set with beryl; your body is as polished ivory overlaid with sapphires.

Although vultures are absent the song box of the birds, their wings whisper “corpses.” once some death is recognizedthey find a thermal to climb and glide.There, they are joined by hungry othersloafing through the final hours. I watched them circling eights and tracedtheir shadows against the crop,level as a field of snow. They must have been attending an animal running wild in its starvation.

It was some comfort to consider it.The vultures turned the spindle works inside the sky’s great clock. I was only some filthy boy or animal. I’d been sent there like a secret, secreted let’s say, because death is abstract. It is my infant brother’s death, my mother’s boundless grief, and the unspeakable acts of living on. even now, when the world goes quiet, the past is a tomb for archeologists, a pit of coprolite. It is those vultures I saw,

C o P R o L I T e : T o R N A D o : : T U R K e Y V U LT U R e S : ✣ 13

above me, while I squatted on my blue blanket on the dirt under the lone tree. Preventedthe house, left alone with only thought,I rose one day and defecated on the wholeof summer and Kansas and the oldwoman watching from her window.Something for the flies. Defiance became a mode of being. My mother abandoned me for the dead child, who was nothing even then, like memory. And the nothing was palpable, the only plasma that drove the chaos through itself.

In the shapes birds make of sky,I saw on the horizon line that the field was bearded with an infestation. At a distance it seemed the business end of some mythical thresh, mowingthe wheat, moving over it like a fog. It was some orchestrated cloud of insect, a black erasure, a tidal stretch acrossthe soft blond land. each head of grain leaned down upon and kissed benevolently home.

Some among that nation pooled behind in char, devouring, the marrow of each stalk to dust. others cleared trenches and leapt into the next possible light mouthful of heaven. They churned and rose in wavesthat bit down again ahead.

They were instructed by no god but the many which they contained: the one called Maul, Slaughter,Nail-driver, Butcher, Scabbard, the god who drinks in time of drought, The Lamb,

14 ✣ C o P R o L I T e : T o R N A D o : : T U R K e Y V U LT U R e S :

the one called Void, the Brute. he is all encompassing Disdain.he is Vigilance. Truth-bearer. Slayer. Indifference. Tar. Barbarian. Beast. one is Crumble. Another Supine. Thorn-finch one. Another Monkfish. Bottom dwellers and those from cloud. Another called Insignificance-obsolete. Wretch, how they are cursed, but many are the names burned upon the lips. Lot-counter, Fact-checker, Judge. The one who made these forty million mouths. The one called Do Not Repeat, who bringsus loss, who makes it to consume, and endure.

Where am I the body replies.

here. This near to the maw that pushes the great wheel tumbling through all our forgetful days. The more they eat, the more unquenched. Yet for this moment, stripped of all, they coil their amazing legs and squat down into their midst.Their short glider wings sprout from each brilliant empennage. And now the rear guard of the grasshopper hordejettison together and soar.

The whole of the world that year ravaged by an appetite that I felt was all my doing. All of it.

even as the vulture’s shadowbegins to disappear within a darker force, the insect wreckage widens by degree.I asked my questions: Is this the bodyand this the thought, is this who I am

C o P R o L I T e : T o R N A D o : : T U R K e Y V U LT U R e S : ✣ 1

or my believing in it? And there, like an answer , thickening in the cumulusat the apex of the earth, at the mouthof the sky, maybe two counties away,the gentle bell and downward swirl,the exclamation of tornado. It is small from here, and yet I can see it is lowering its spiral staircase. It drops one toe. Then, twinned, it plants one leg into the soil and now another. Now it walks a titan upon the earth. Now the vultures have flown, and now the insect nation is pulled from its feast and thrown into oblivion. Now one runs from the house and drags me off. Now I am pulled to the cellar where we wait as all the unseen things begin to die beneath the canopy of the wheat, and now I weep, for no one will be there to pick us clean.

I must place vultures snuggly into the history of the self. These birdswhose bone-white beaks are finished with a ripping hook, sharp as any question mark. These who eat only the dead, who roost in empty subterranean haunts, thick stands of trees, caves, or that walk-in Virginia cellar in the rubble of disrepair. The mates are loyal and communal, flying back to perch at dusk among their elders and kin, often one hundred to a colony. And thisis what I see after the storm. I walk into the altered landscape of my life, consumed and shat back out.I find shingles from the housestrewn about the yard. The fields

16 ✣ C o P R o L I T e : T o R N A D o : : T U R K e Y V U LT U R e S :

are mulched, the wheat, supplicant, a new trench dug for working, the great tree shed of leaves. Yet as I walk beneath it, the light dies. For up in the many arms and echelons I realize I have come beneath some silent adjudication. It is the whole of the vulture wake. Their eyes at once so plaintive and surprised, so sorrowed I was still alive.

darreN Morris’s poems have appeared in journals including The American Poetry Review, The SouthernReview, Hotel Amerika, 32 Poems, and Raritan. his short fiction was awarded a fellowship by the Virginiacommission for the arts and his short story “The Weight of the World” recently won the Just desserts Prize atPassages North.

C o P R o L I T e : T o R N A D o : : T U R K e Y V U LT U R e S : ✣ 17

Ancestors, rachel eliza griffiths. Photograph based on Aubade with Panopticon by Sally Wen Mao, 2011.

Conciliábulo de grajosen torno a un trozo de carne

Soñaba el lobo / que unos pájaros negrosdesgarraban su piel a picotazos / —y era cierto

Uno iba en círculo / le rozaba los belfosluego volaba a un árbol / y cantaba en silencio

otro se afana en vano / con las patas abiertasen arrancar del suelo / los restos de la presa

Grajo verdinegro / por mirar el cieloparado en un tronco / tornasola el cuello

Mientras el lobo duerme / y aquel grajo regresala blancura se tiñe / el pájaro se atreve

Levanta con el pico / un ojo abierto y negroy sacude las alas / y lo esconde en el suelo

Su sueño huele a sangre / los párpados entierrasi tan sólo lo inquieta / el canto de unas aves

Grajo verdinegro / cabeza de cuervoun pájaro en otro / tornasola el viento

The Wolf’s dream / intaglio(from Star Lip)

ALFoNSo D’AqUINoTRANSLATIoN FRoM The SPANISh BY FoRReST GANDeR

el sueño del lobo / intaglio(from Astro Labio)

20

Cabal of gracklesswarming a piece of meat

The wolf dreamed / some black birdspierced its skin with their beaks /—and it was true

one circled / grazing the wolf’s jowlsand landed in a tree / to caw in silence

Another plugs away / with splayed legsat what remains of a carcass/ in the dirt

Green black grackle / eyeing the skystanding on a stump / its neck iridescing

The grackle returns / while the wolf sleepsits white fur ruddied / and the bird getting bolder

It plucks up with its bill / an open black eyeand shaking its wings / plants the eye in the ground

The wolf’s dream reeks of blood / buried eyelidsand it’s bothered / by all the bird calls

Green black grackle / raven’s headone bird in another / iridescing the wind

The Wolf’s dream / intaglio(from Star Lip)

forrest gaNder‘s most recent book is Core Samples from the World. recent translations include Spectacle &Pigsty: Poems of Kiwao Nomura and Watchword by Pura López Colomé.

alfoNso d’aquiNo, born in Mexico city in 1959, is the author of many books, including Vibora breve (smallViper) and Piedra no piedra (rock No rock). at the age of 22, he was awarded the prestigious carlos PellicerPoetry Prize.

T h e W o L F ’ S D R e A M / I N T A G L I o ✣ 21

夜ごと 私たちは連れていかれる

誰もいない場所に 誰も生じえない場所に

愛する者にお別れをいうまもなく

とりどりの子供たちの鬼面が 迎えに来るのだ

途中 さびれた街なかを抜け

いくつかの橋を渡るが

下を川が流れているようには思えない

むしろ草 夜の低みのみだらな草

ああ私たちは そこに欲望を解消することもできたのに

また途中 子供たちのひとりが

鬼面を脱ぎ 向こうには雪が欠けている

時の湯垢のように降る雪が

と忠告するけれど

その顔も 街の灯のように遠ざかる

愛する大地 愛する大地

それから不意に 私たちは中空にせり出してゆく

かのよう 眼は取り払われて

眼は取り払われて

どこをどう経めぐったのか

気がつくと みえないが

誰もいない場所だ 誰も生じえない場所だ

私たちは淋しいし

耳からひるひる分身を躍り出させて

互いが互いの影を撫でるように たたずむ

そのとき そこにいるのは誰だ

そこにいるのは誰だ と二度

厳しく問われてしまう

その声のほうへ 私たちはしかし

昏れてゆくことができない

夜ごと だから私たちは戻ってくるのだ

いくつかの橋を渡り 濡れて大きな

泣きはらしたような眼を

嵌められて

(夜ごと私たちは連れていかれる）

(nightly we are taken)KIWAo NoMURATRANSLATIoN FRoM The JAPANeSe BY FoRReST GANDeR AND KYoKo YoShIDA

22

(nightly we are taken)nightly we are taken to the place no one goes the place no one arriveswithout farewell to those we lovethe myriad devil masks of children come for us

on our way through a desolate townwe cross serial bridgesand beneath them flow rivers onlyof weeds wanton weeds, night’s low-lying land

ah we might have drained our desires thereand when we’re on our way again one of the children peels off his devil mask to warn usthat the snow here drifting down like time’s limescalethins out to nothing on the other side

and then even his face fades like city light my sweet old earth my sweet old earthwith no warning we are upthrust into midairor so it seems our eyes plucked out

our eyes plucked outwhere and how it comes about we can’t presume but now we are herein the place - no one goes the place - no one arrives

we are so desolateour fluttering doubles leap from our earas if to caress each other’s shadow we stand stock still and right then who’s there?

who’s there? twicethe question is barkedbut because we cannot gloamback at the voice

nightly therefore we return recrossing serial bridges enchased withbig wet eyes swollenwith weeping

kiWao NoMura is revered in Japan where he has been awarded major literary honors including the rekiteiPrize for young Poets and the prestigious takami Jun Prize. his inspired work as a writer, editor, performer,organizer, and critic has altered the landscape of contemporary Japanese literature. Spectacle & Pigsty, Nomura’sfirst book in english, has just been published by omnidawn.

kyoko yoshida was born and raised in fukuoka, Japan. she was a participant of the 2005 internationalWriting Program at university of iowa. her stories have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Chelsea,The Cream City Review and The Beloit Fiction Journal, among other places.

23

Nightly We Are Taken, rachel eliza griffiths. Photograph based on (nightly we are taken) by Kiwao Nomura, 2011.

in the planking of the pine woods tilts a moon low enough to snag as itflings itself through the brambling night. Against the alder tilts a lean-tothatched with branches—a pile of pieces of tree laid over the sleeping bagpatterned with bees. Though sleep is a form of hunting, it does not feed.half of my heart forages. half of my heart fumbles for the zipper pull be-tween the wings. Cartridged in small-caliber vines are the grave berriesthat I should not eat. I already ate them, did I say that? Recklessly is howI kiss my compass. Commuting through the present version of direction-less excursion, I thank untrustworthy fruits & low-slung moons for slink-ing around this wild-willed bivouac in a toxic vineyard. Shelters have theirown weather. Before mystery tilts into fear, the marsh unloads its sweet-ling mist for another place to bear.

cecily Parks is the author of the poetry collection Field Folly Snow (university of georgia Press, 2008). herpoems, reviews, and essays on art appear in American Letters and Commentary, Boston Review, Orion, andelsewhere. she earned a Ph.d. in english from the cuNy graduate center, where she wrote a dissertation onamerican women writers and swamps.

PalustrineCeCILY PARKS

26

i

The difference between feetand hands, studies say,is in what occurs just before them: legs or arms.

As the difference between a room and an enclosure can be known by the presence of curtains and if a personcan tell the weatherfrom what’s trickleddown the walls.

ii

The tiny spiral staircase in this corner appears to be moving.

Some experts say it is not.

They say as wellthat the nature of enclosure is like this.

recent findingsIDRA NoVeY

after the cells of Louise Bourgeois

27

iii

It’s rare but possible, doctors say, that a man in an enclosurecan bite into a mirror and turn it to stone.

iV

As for this enclosure,larger and sprawlinglike never before, polls note a stalling for the right language of lamentand then . . .

V

Too many enclosuresmake people cold,new data shows, and when it’s coldit’s going to be cold.

As for the spider,he’s feeling for an open seambetween the walls.

idra NoVey is the author of Exit, Civilian, a 2011 National Poetry series selection, forthcoming in april 2012,and The Next Country. her recent translations include clarice lispecter’s novel The Passion According to G.H.and a collection of poems by Manuel de Barros, Birds for a Demolition. she’s taught in the Bard college Prisoninitiative and in columbia university’s school of the arts.

28 ✣ R e C e N T F I N D I N G S

every man walking in the landscape is the landscape’s memory of theman walking. Despite those around him, despite his openness, no onecomes close. For him the streets are alive because he exists, because some-where he walks. he closes time with each step. he walks in order to beabsorbed by the moment. Sometimes his lips move and I want to believehe is reciting some lines I once saw:

Some stones to hold.Some stones to throw. Some stones to stand on.

every stone he finds on the street during one of his walks he picks upand touches to his mouth. Can he taste his own death, his own erosion,his exhausted time? The landscape absorbs his beauty. he is made sad bya nagging sense that all his sadness loses its meaning, that he is withoutexpression. In his rush toward life, whatever it looked like, he lost hisplace in the evolution of time. I like watching him walk. It soothes me. Ilike his exposure, his insistence, his unstoppable patience. When he hasfound too many stones, when they become heavy, when his hands cannothold any more, when his fingers start to ache, he drops the whole lot ofthem. Just like that. everyday in some man somewhere I see him andeveryday he drops them and the stones form a tombstone at his feet. Isee him, even when I am not watching—I see him drop them.

Some stones to hold.Some stones to throw.Some stones to stand on.

claudia raNkiNe is currently the henry g. lee Professor of english at Pomona college. she is the author offour collections of poetry, including Don't Let Me Be Lonely (graywolf, 2004); PLOT (2001); The End of theAlphabet (1998); and Nothing in Nature is Private (1995), which received the cleveland state Poetry Prize.

situation 8 (from Provenance)

CLAUDIA RANKINe

29

these photographs were taken in shanxi Province in northwest china. They docu-ment ancient customs that have their origins in pagan religious beliefs includingvoodoo totem worship.

to me, these customs create a kind of theatrical drama. in order to represent theidentities of each different god, people dress in stunning costumes and have theirfaces painted exquisitely. today a number of these customs have survived to remainone of the most important cultural practices in the lunar New year throughout mostof shanxi Province in northwest china.

shanxiPortfolio

zhANG xIAo

zhaNg xiao was born in yantai, shandong Province. he graduated from yantai university, and worked as aphotographer for chongqing Morning Post from 2005 to 2009. he now works as a freelance photographer, andlives in chengdu, sichuan Province, china.

3030

S h A N x I ✣ 31

32 ✣ S h A N x I

S h A N x I ✣ 33

34 ✣ S h A N x I

S h A N x I ✣ 3

36 ✣ S h A N x I

S h A N x I ✣ 37

38 ✣ S h A N x I

S h A N x I ✣ 39

40 ✣ S h A N x I

S h A N x I ✣ 41

Some homes are meant to make its inhabitants feel homelessThis same siege precludes the morning alarmsMy head on the pillow, my heart debarking hundreds of airshipsAgain I am uptown, where you are sleeping me away againWe are in your ex-lover’s apartment where the light steals all your featuresIn moments like this I understand the sad rapture of spiesMy head is an empty museum with a storehouse of stolen paintingsIn my comatose dream my mother was singing “Midnight in Moscow”The waters were trembling, everything had died except the verminDo not be afraid, I told the mouse, and it bit the poisoned bait from my handsI am stranded, not brave, in this roofless shelteron the fire escape I kiss an outlaw for unpardoned mistakesSometimes I can’t believe the power of my own liesIt is fanatical to lie with you now when the rotten apples pile inside meIt is insufferable to caress the hand that once buried my limbs in autumn snowWhat can you do with all this dangerous, disastrous mightYou are silly as daybreak when the crows are fightingYou wake now, and this waking is the color of dried mantisesUnderneath my eyelids, mudslides shudder into wrecked riversAnd somehow with a single eyelash you can flush the breath out of this imbroglioDo you know the white worms that are my brains in my handsThey have tiny eyes that remember everythingDo you remember when we first met, you immediately told me your body’s secretYou were missing the center of your sternumIf I pushed two fingers inside I could potentially kill youI was once an oval sepal in the center of your gravityIn ecstasy your mouth is a carillon’s faraway dineven in these throes I remember the shame you taught me, every thrust of itA corolla upon which I break in lambent halvesWhat if in this moment I am a machine that buries all warnings

aubade with Panopticondecember 12, 2010

SALLY WeN MAo

42

sally WeN Mao is an 826 Valencia young author's scholar and a kundiman fellow. her work can be foundpublished or forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Sycamore Review, and WestBranch, among others.

And I can rip through the morning with something flammable and inappropriateShaking like an endangered cockpitWhat poison, what lust, what battle, what futureWhen you crush me, ask a difficult question and I will replyMy ancestors died stabbed and torched, how did yours

A U B A D e W I T h P A N o P T I C o N ✣ 43

Sad Rapture, rachel eliza griffiths. Photograph based on Aubade with Panopticon by Sally Wen Mao, 2011.

eksegese iii konings, 2 : 1–12

elisa, bly tog hier in Gilgaldie here roep my alleen na Bet-alsê elia, die man met die ligte vel

maar elisa sê : sowaar die here leefsowaar as daar asem in my liggaam beef ek verlaat jou nie

toe sê elia : bly hier, die here Bo—en jy en ek moet hom albei glo—wil hê ek moet alleen na Jerigo

maar elisa sê : sowaar die here leefsowaar as daar asem in my liggaam beefek verlaat jou nie

toe sê elia : nou moet ons uitmekaar uit gaandie here wil hê ons moet mekaar laat staandie here roep my alleen na die Jordaan

maar elisa sê : sowaar die here Leefsowaar as daar asem in my liggaam beefek verlaat jou nie

toe was elia radelooselisa wou nie weg nie, elisa wou nie skeielisa het soos 'n skadu op sy spoor gebly...maar toe word die here self vir elisa boos

— want die here is met sy eie, bars of breekdie here laat Sy eie nooit in die steek —

Three PoemsADAM SMALLTRANSLATIoN FRoM The KAAPS BY MIKe DICKMAN

46

en die here het uit die storm gestuurdie wa met die perde en die vuur

✣

elisa het na sy donker vel gekyken verleë deur die donker weggestryk

T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L ✣ 47

exegisis iii kings, 2: 1-12

elisha, remain here in Gilgalit is me alone the Lord calls to Bethelsaid elijah, the light–skinned man

but elisha said: as sure as the Lord livesas sure as the breath in my body movesnever will I abandon you

then elijah said: stay here, the lord Above—and you and I both must believe him—wishes that I alone go to Jericho

but elisha said: as sure as the Lord livesas sure as the breath in my body movesnever will I abandon you

then elijah said: now must we go forth each alonethe Lord wishes us to leave off what is between usthe Lord calls me to the Jordan alone

but elisha said: as sure as the Lord livesas sure as the breath in my body movesnever will I abandon you

so elijah was at his wits endelisha would not leave, elisha would not partelisha dogged him like a shadow . . . but then the Lord himself became angry with elisha—for the Lord is with his own, come what maythe Lord left his own need in the lurch—

48 ✣ T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L

and out of the storm the Lord sent forththe chariot and the horses and the fire

✣

elisha looked at his own dark skinand walked off embarrassed through dark

T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L ✣ 49

evangelisasieverslagTen little Nigger Boys went to Jo'burg

ons wou tien klein kaffertjies neem na die hemelhoeveel is daar nie as die land van hulle wemel?

twee vier ses agt nege tien :hulle moet uiteindelik die Groot Lig sien

maar al gou het een begin watertanden teruggedros na die potte van Jiems se land

ons wou nege klein kaffertjies neem na die hemelhoeveel is daar nie as die land van hulle wemel?

maar soos dit gaan, met verloop van tydhet een laat vat met 'n hotnosmeid

ons wou agt klein kaffertjies neem na die hemelhoeveel is daar nie as die land van hulle wemel?

maar een is op heterdaad betrap'n polisiekoeël het in sy kop geklap

en daar was sewe klein kaffertjies om te neem na die hemelhoeveel is daar nie as die land van hulle wemel?

. . . en so het hulle uitgesak langs die pad :een het sy pas “verloor"—was echter besig om revolusie aan te voor!—en een het selfs met 'n wit vrou laat spat

(maar na ver oorsee,o na vér oorsee) . . .

0 ✣ T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L

nogtans, vir dié groot taakmoet ons ons lewe gee

✣

een klein kaffertjie het darem oorgeblyom in die hemel koekepan te ry

T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L ✣ 1

evangilisation reportTen Little Niggers went to Jo’burg

We wanted to take ten little kaffirtjies to heavenhow many are there when the land is aswarm with them?

two four six eight nine ten :they must see the Great Light in the end

but soon enough one of them’s mouth began to waterand he cut back to the pots of Jim’s land

we wanted to take nine little kaffirtjies to heavenhow many are there when the land is aswarm with them?

but with the passing of time, as happens in the worldone made off with a hotenot girl

we wanted to take eight little kaffirtjies to heavenhow many are there when the land is aswarm with them?

but one was caught in the acthis skull by a police bullet cracked

then there were seven little kaffirtjies to take to heavenhow many are there when the land is aswarm with them?

. . . and so by the wayside they fell :one ‘lost’ his pass—and was also busy starting revolution!—and one even skedaddled with a white girl

(but far overseas,o far overseas) . . .

2 ✣ T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L

and yet it’s for this great taskthat we must give our lives

✣

there was one little kaffirtjie left over all the sameto ride in heaven’s cocopan

T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L ✣ 3

lydingsweg

ons het lankal in plekkesoes Windermereal ons verlangensafgalaar

o here djy kan maar lysterna ons liedsonner worry, ons is lankalverby vadriet

altyd as ek na dieoeg toe gaandan dink ek aan die brylofby Kana

maar ons het lankal in plekkesoes Windermereal ons verlangensafgalaar

en as tussen die shantieshier die wetmy soek vlug ek altyddeur Nasaret

maar here djy kan maar lysterna ons liedsonner worry, ons is lankalverby vadriet

so moenie worry nie hereek is opgafixek is my eie hereen dan’s is ons twie kietsprik ’n anner gêng se mannemy eendag vol snye

4 ✣ T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L

gaat ek sterwe aan my eiekrys vi’ myne

o al lankal in plekkesoes Windermerehet ons al ons verlangensafgalaar

all lankal in plekkesoes Windermereal ons verlangensafgalaar

T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L ✣

6 ✣ T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L

Path of suff’ring

Longtime already in placeslike Windermerewe dumpedall our yearnings

o Lord you can jus lissent’ our songwit no worries, we‘s longpass grief

ev’ry time I goto da barI t’ink of da weddingin Cana

but already longtime in placeslike Windermerewe dumpedall our yearnings

and when da lawhunts me here among de shanties I’m always on da runthrough Naz’reth

but Lord you can jus lissent’ our songwit no worries, we’s longpass grief

so you mussen worry LordI’m all fix upI’m my own Lordso then we quitsstir up some other gang’s menmy someday full of cuts

T h R e e P o e M S B Y A D A M S M A L L ✣ 7

I’m gunna die alonescream out f’ mine

o longtime already in placeslike Windermerewe dumpedall our yearnings

longtime already in placeslike Windermereall our yearningsdumped

adaM sMall (b. 1936), novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, and translator, is a controversial south africanliterary figure, known for his poetry in afrikaans, english, and kaaps, the creole expression of afrikaans whichhe himself defined in the preface to the 1973 volume of Kitaar my kruis. a new version of My Guitar My Cross,translated by Mike dickman, is forthcoming from island Position in 2012.

Mike dickMaN moved to france, where he has lived ever since, working first as an english teacher and,latterly, as a translator of arcane texts from tibetan and old french and poetry from french and afrikaanswhile at the same time maintaining activities in both music and t'ai chi.

My someday full of cuts, rachel eliza griffiths. Photograph based on Path of Suff’ring by Adam Small.

The mother’s red hair stained our sheetsand the maple tree she pursued with her attentionssympathizing with the fall of leaves into our booksbandaging the wounded veinsThe mother hurled broken crockery and imprecations at autumnlet a single lash fall from our eyesand her curses would be realized

We were otherwisemany in onelike pictures that last a long timeand the rain when it becomes volubleThe mother wanted us long-armed like St John’s streamssmooth to move easily into her sleepAnd if the chestnut trees kept on battling in the hearth’s cindersit wasn’t their crackling that would wake us

four PoemsVéNúS KhoURY-GhATATRANSLATIoN FRoM The FReNCh BY MARILYN hACKeR

60

F o U R P o e M S B Y V é N ú S K h o U R Y - G h A T A ✣ 61

She closed her arms and her shutters to keep the odor ofthyme in her casserole and the odor of bees in our hair

We were occupants and visitors at once the traveler and the one who watches the boat sail awayThe rosary of peppers on the windowsill protected us from gossipThose outside said we were soluble in darknessbecause a pomegranate tree had stolen our share of sunlighttalked about us right to the end of the ravine The rustling of their words caused the flood that carried us away

reading wastes words and makes concentrationboil over like milk on the stove

the mother would repeatand she sharpened the cypress like a pencil

For lack of books we read her intentionssure that she would leave us at the juncture of sleep as soon as it gave her some

children that were hers alonewould leave usas soon as she had swept our fears under the tablegathered up the crumbs of her huge fatigueand our shoes lined up in order of size like good schoolchildrenwould leave us without going awaysewn into her sheether children become pebbles in her womb

62 ✣ F o U R P o e M S B Y V é N ú S K h o U R Y - G h A T A

lebanese poet and novelist, long-time Paris resident VéNus khoury-ghata is the author of seventeen novels,including Une Maison aux bord des larmes, La Maestra, and La fille qui marchait dans le désert. and fifteen col-lections of poems, most recently Quelle est la nuit parmi les nuits (Mercure de france, 2006). The poems in thisissue are from a new collection, Où vont les arbres, to be published next year.

MarilyN hacker’s twelve books of poems include Names (Norton, 2009), and Essays on Departure (carcanetPress, 2006)). among her translations from the french are Marie etienne’s King of a Hundred Horsemen andVénus khoury-ghata’s Alphabets of Sand (carcanet Press, 2008) and Nettles (graywolf Press, 2008). she is achancellor of the academy of american Poets.

F o U R P o e M S B Y V é N ú S K h o U R Y - G h A T A ✣ 63

at night all words were black The moon bleached them like chicken bonesThose legible in darkness disappeared with the mothsWe kept the roundest ones to make holes in the streamfollowed them to the river mouth where earth splits like the belly of a woman giving

birthentrusted them to the sea wrapped in myrtle that prevents forgetfulnessthen went back with slow steps toward the aging pages

Next to the throne where we are waitingfor you to judge I sit you in a hardback chair.I don’t tie you to its broken arms.I don’t offer you torture, confession. Freedom.You could only give me what you gave the scholars.A chamber of vapors you named history.I give you water. You do not see my blood in it.I give you bread the rest of us cannot eatbecause we gave our bellies to red crows.I swivel a tambourine like a knife through air.We nod in time to airless music, I wish it was blue.I watch the scale of love tilt. I touch your hipsand you like that. You like my bones to want you.In a solo you know the hymn and sing itwith your lips cold. Those are your lips?Below we watch cities unfurl their flagsand you don’t blink when the childrenfall out like mice, smothered thin.I polish you with tar. I shine you.I give you fruit after checking each seedfor poison. here is a book about war I sayand you smile, taking it from my bloody hands.In the government of dreams you are behindon your paperwork. So you are like democracy.You offer me the throne. We are waiting forthe servants to rinse the place where yousoiled it from your last visit. I have been standinghere for two hundred years by your side.even when you left me for another woman.

recurrenceRACheL eLIzA GRIFFIThS

64

R e C U R R e N C e ✣ 6

The smell of my singed skin is in the skyand the rows of the harvest. I wait for your orders.Mushroom, nimbus, tornado. Fire.I hold a sterling tray of faceswaiting for you to make up your mind.

rachel eliza griffiths is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books/2010) and The Requited Distance(The sheep Meadow Press/2011). her next full-length collection, Mule & Pear, (New issues Poetry & Prose), waspublished this fall.

Recurrence, rachel eliza griffiths. Photograph based on Aubade with Panopticon by Sally Wen Mao, 2011.

we are all here, and we are all here together with our backs to the moon. here is a house.Go to it. Go to door. open door. The door is locked and you should’ve known. There is a keyunderneath the doormat, and you should’ve known. When I was young there were plantsthat lined our walkway. one day I saw a snake move from one plant to another and disappearlike a light being turned off, a coil of green being spit from leaves. At school, I told the chil-dren that it was poisonous, that I reached my hand into the leaves to get the key that wekept hidden in the mulch so I could open the door and run upstairs without saying hello tomy mother because she is not home. I can run up those stairs faster than anyone; handsover feet. This is the house I grew up in. There were fourteen stairs that I counted everytime I ran down them. In my sleep I crawled up bookcases; feet touching pages documentinghow to make a rocket, lessons on giving, lessons on not giving. Go to sleep. open sleep.There is a photograph of me standing in front of the door on my way to school. I cannot re-member how our kitchen looked. I cannot remember how our bathroom looked. I used tolive in a hallway. My bed was a boat and I would draw on the windows in crayon morningsbefore church, before I was lifted up from under my arms and brought down to the ground.Pick up child. I was in love with insulation but it would make me itch. There are sheets formy bed. There is a cast for my arm. I would sit in the darkness of the attic to learn whatdarkness is. We cannot use the word kill. It must be changed. There are neighbors here. Theman next door is named red. They have a white dog and I have given it a new name. Thereis a girl who says the devil lives in her room but her mother got rid of it. There is a farm andsometimes the quails escape. everyone within a five-mile radius is going to die if I press thebutton. This is where the magic happens. This is where the heart is. Ring the doorbell. Thedoor is locked and you should’ve known. My mother is not a person—she is my mother.They are a building a house nearby. My father is not a person—he is my father. I threw rocksin the air and I hurt someone. They are not people—they should be home and they are not.There is no key hidden here; this is not a home. I would come here, amongst the gray sidingand garbage dumpsters, the wooden stairs, the white walls and collect candy. There are somany families and so little space; we could never get to them all. They gave out razorbladesthe kids said. They gave out apples with razorblades the kids said. our street was namedafter a bird that I had never heard of, a kingbird, a tyrant. A hockey game swirls on cin-derblocks and we are sad. There was no basement here, no attic. Go to loose brick. You

Maniac MansionBRIAN oLIU

68

learn quickly that you can operate at one speed here; there is no button to hold down thatcauses legs to move any faster, the background to scroll in reverse at any greater speed.There is no outrunning the nurse at the refrigerator. There is no getting to the door. Thereis a strategy here that involves the hero getting caught and pressing the brick and trying torun for the door. Go to door. The door is locked and you should’ve known. There are threeof us. Press the brick and let the other out. I remember nothing about the house where Ilived before I lived there. There is a photograph I have seen of me holding my body up bypressing my hand into a wall. It is dark; there is a light. This is where I lived, at the end ofthis hallway. My first memory was not this. Stand by the brick and press the brick. I am notscared of the dark. There is no gas for the chainsaw. In this house that is not a house is agrandfather clock that moves like a terror. The boy with the blue skin has the same name asmy father. The boy with the blue skin has the same name as a town that I know. I know thecolor blue. There is no way to document this. There are numbers that need to be writtendown—I have memorized my phone number and it has not changed despite changes inceilings. I want you to come to my house. Please come to my house. I am proud of you,house. There is a cheerleader in my house. There is a bully in my house. We will learn aboutthe beatitudes and they will eat my dessert, they will watch my television. My mother hascleaned the basement. There is a new coat of paint on the walls. This house is growingsmaller with every new color. The deck is peeling. There is a hole where the horse wentthrough. I was the only one home when it happened. There were no dogs. This house lookssmaller without walls. My room exists without walls. My father and I stuff wires into elec-trical boxes and eat soup cooked on a fire. We press tiles onto the floor while watching tel-evision. The sawdust sticks to our shirts. We see the dogs. A horse walked up to our door.Go to door, horse. The horse’s leg snapped—I heard it crack like a tree, like peppermint. Iwas home. Walk to. What is.

BriaN oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in tuscaloosa, alabama. New work appears inFairy Tale Review, Hotel Amerika, and Drunken Boat. his book of tuscaloosa craigslist Missed connections, SoYou Know It’s Me, was released in June 2011 by tiny hardcore Press.

M A N I A C M A N S I o N ✣ 69

those who take the blame for me.

The forest of illness is gray. Sometimes it emits a harrowing whisper. It can’t be calledvoice, impossible to make out any sort of message in it. It is silence actively kept, thebody of muteness, gnawed by animals, abandoned.

You pass between vacant collapsed stone houses, pavilions, yards, shaft after shaft,walls cold and ice-colder, half-wrecked administration buildings, culverts (caved in, filledwith earth), windy empty corridors, old body of earth, earth eyes, memory’s inex-haustible blacked-out labyrinth. Under the veil of darkness no face, lips. At night they callto me. Then they visit me in a dream. In the dream they move with my movements, themute voice then is the voice that exists

What the world is like. They take the blame for me.The madhouse is black. Inside the marvelous faces make their appearance and live.They rise up from the general body of blame, from the murderous glutinous walls they

emerge like growths composed of some entirely unknown, fresh and clear organic matter,out of blame they grow like the rose out of dark blood

The wild dirty mild mass of facesThe black sticky walls, the burst water pipes, the enamel buckets rusted through,

smothered between high walls, the little garden’s three dead trees, hard gravel. Withintheir eyes in the black misty well of their gaze the mountain of the Transfiguration ap-pears, out into the radiant mute unknown now they walk and walk

(from Context)BIRGITTA TRoTzIGTRANSLATIoN FRoM The SWeDISh BY RIKA LeSSeR

Birgitta trotzig (1929–2011), a beloved grande dame of swedish letters, published some twenty books oflyrical prose—among them novels, essays, short stories and poetry—and was inducted into the swedish academyin 1993. The poem published here is from her 1996 collection Sammanhang (Context).

rika lesser is a poet and translator who resides in Brooklyn, Ny. she has translated a number of german andmany swedish authors. her translation of göran sonnevi’s Mozart’s Third Brian (yale) will appear in paperbackin 2012. her most recent books are Questions of Love: New and Selected Poems and Etruscan Things, both fromsheep Meadow Press.

70

dado

he longs forthe secret forms of godstretchedalong the back of his neck

he longs forwhat whispersare listening toin deep midnight

he askswhat the vision of a lotus isagainst fleshif not a trick

he longs forthe hallucinations death hasand the latitude ofan echo against an echo

he longs forwhat can’t die—the remains of evidencethat we aren’t alone

Three PoemsNAThALIe hANDAL

71

72 ✣ T h R e e P o e M S B Y N A T h A L I e h A N D A L

ojalá

he holds on to the forcethat stretches the narrow lightand finds himself somewhere behind history.

he thinks,All we have leftis to invent God,to find an infinite number to hope in,to touch the grounds of La Manquita,say Insha’allah,and wait for the church bellsto remind us of who we have become.

he knows what it meansto live in another sleep—time moving over faces.

There are different varieties of loss—his is contemplatingwater trapped in mouths,

his is never enteringLa Malagueta,

his is tryingto understandwhat God willing means,

or if that is what we sayto erase the fog on our tongue.

T h R e e P o e M S B Y N A T h A L I e h A N D A L ✣ 73

el País

The hills move an inch—no sound by the treeno whisper, no hour to speak of,no dreambut a misplaced lighthe should be aware of,the word fulanoechoing inside of him.Music migrates too.he looks at the el País,wonderswho is wise enoughto understandwhen a country runstowards a mantells him,we leave behindour life for others to love,leave, what sound can’t destroy.

And he thinks,will Machado return?

Nathalie haNdal is the author of numerous books including Love and Strange Horses. she writes the blog-column, The City and The Writer, for Words without Borders magazine. her new collection, Poet in Andalucía isforthcoming.

i

This blood this begonia this barn owl Jaguar in your hand Your heart has child’s claws There is no way we can fix the flowers Slings and macanas Sacred jaguar

iii

he asked her with jaracanda tree in his hand. If he says he loves her in this room, how many jackals and ostriches will wear fans of guacamaya feathers and serve chocolate from lacquered gourds. Will feed her with tortoise -shell spoons. In their arms. Grasshoppers off volcanic plates. The normality of the instance. The creative gesture of the vertigo.

V

You are the city of black squirrels and vendors. You chant in my ears cinco pesosYou hand me incas, hummingbirds, the ghosts of coyotes. Tongues of colors flame inthe streets of my body. A woman combs man’s hair outside. A lizard threads through the tree. Magnolias and pine trees. Nopal and Avocado ice-creams. Frog altar. A Franciscan monk shambling and blessing. The goddess Coatlicue sweeps at the top of the hill, Coatepec. She picks up the ball of feathers, places it next to her womb. When she tries to find it, she is pregnant.

Mexican PrayerseWA ChRUSCIeL

74

M e x I C A N P R A Y e R S ✣ 7

Vii

here are monks of royalty, peacocks. They strut into your soul. They are saint dusters.here mythical ceiba tree grows out of the mask of the earth. Touching the crowns of ashtrees with your feet. Palms, sacrificed pineapples. Dusters, elevated mummified peacock trees. They grow on streets into houses. Which stride high in the ceilings. The ac-robats of the unreachable. We pass high wire streets. The tunes of hurdy-gurdy. Under ourfeet, sacrifice. Under our feet in glass-cases, the skulls of Aztecs. only palms here are sky-scrapers. San Vital for those who have difficult dreams and school exams. Pray for us. Divinemetonymy. Vital Martyrs.

Viii

The earth is a quadrangle floating on a great body of water. In the center rises a sacredmountain with a cave at the entrance of which grows a ceiba tree. Who is he who holdsa jaguar head? Saints are fully in their jacaranda trees, in love with purples.on a tree a peackock sits. Yet another apparition of the Madonna. Rumors on photographicplates. Sunset, a splash of a red turtle. Frogs dressed in blue, sacrificed and roasted.

ix

At the end of a 104-year span called huehuetilitli, Aztecs held the ritual of the New Fireduring which women and children were kept in their houses for fear they would transform into wild animals

xi

Triangular blossom on your tilma—is both a heart with its arteries and a flower and mountains that hold water inside For Zozocolco Indians truth is flowers and songs Why do we tear apart our hearts? What demons await this sacrifice? This Lady says that, without tearing them out, we should place them in her hands so

that she may then present them to the true God

76 ✣ M e x I C A N P R A Y e R S

xiii

Morenita. Mother of mestizi,products of conquest and rape. Give us the four-petaled jasmine on your tunic which indigenous knew as Nabui Ollin, “always in the movement.” Virgin of the motion, we search for food among the animals’ stalls. Multiply four petals into eight oh, planet Venus into tulip trees oh, morning star into a sphere, a ring, a biding circumference oh, birth in pregnancy Into breathing Nahuatl—our dear mother into inexhaustible apparitionof ruffed grouse pounding its wings on the log until the whole forest hears until the logs spark into Lumens

eWa chrusciel’s poems have appeared in Boston Review, Colorado Review, Jubilat, Aufgabe, Spoon RiverReview, Omnidawn blog, Process, Lana Turner, Mandorla, Rhino, American Letters and Commentary, PoetryWales (gB), Aesthetica (gB). her translations of poetry appeared in numerous journals and two anthologies ofPolish poetry in english translations: Carnivorous Boy, Carnivorous Bird and Six Polish Poets. she is a Professor ofhumanities at colby-sawyer college

Winter 2011

geoffrey nutterdarren morris

alfonso d’aquinokiwao nomura

cecily parksidra novey

claudia rankinesally wen mao

adam smallvénús khoury-ghata

rachel eliza griffithsbrian oliu

birgitta trotzignathalie handal

ewa chrusciel

Photography by

rachel eliza griffithszhang xiao

Translators

forrest ganderkyoko yoshidamike dickman

marilyn hackerrika lesser