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.

✣

Edtitorsadam wiedewitsch

colin cheneyr.a. villanueva

tonguepirogue collective330A Decatur Street

Brooklyn, New York 11233editors@piroguecollective.org

✣

copyright © 2011 by island position • all rights reservedNo 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 brief

quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Island Position is grateful for the support of the Eva Tas Foundation, the GoréeInstitute, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pirogue Collective, and to

Emna Zghal for her logo design, Ananas Island, with very specialthanks to Jill Schoolman for her resolute patience and generosity.

ISSN tk

a j o u r n a l o f w r i t i n g & a r tSummer / Fall, 2011

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Prelude to What Comes Next geoffrey nutter 8

Coprolite : tornado :: turkey Vultures : darren morris 12

The Wolf’s Dream ✣ Intaglio alfonso d’aquino 22translation from the spanish by forrest gander

(Nightly We Are taken) kiwao nomura 24translation from the japanese by forrest gander and kyoko yoshida

Palustrine cecily parks 28

Recent Findings idra novey 29

Situation 8 (from Provenance) claudia rankine 31

Shanxi Portfolio zhang xiao 32

Aubade with Panopticon sally wen mao 44

Evangelization Report ✣ Exegesis I ✣ Path of Sufferingadam small 48

translation from the kaaps by mike dickman

“The mother’s red hair stained our sheets" ✣ She closed herarms and her shutters to keep the odor of thyme in her

casserole and the odor of bees in our hair" ✣ “Reading wasteswords and makes concentration boil over like milk on

the stove" ✣ “At night all words were black"venús khoury-ghata 62

translation from the french by marilyn hacker

Recurrence rachel eliza griffiths 68

Maniac Mansion brian oliu 72

“Those who take the blame for me" birgitta trotzig 74translation from the swedish by rika lesser

El Pais ✣ Dado ✣ Ojalá nathalie handal 75

Mexican Prayers ewa chrusciel 78

Art throughout byrachel eliza griffiths

Contents

rachel eliza griffiths’s literary and visual work has been widely published in journals, magazines,anthologies, and periodicals. Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, writer, photographer, and painter. A Cave CanemFellow, she received the MA in English Literature from the University of Delaware and the MFA in CreativeWriting from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the recipient of fellowships including Provincetown Fine Arts WorkCenter, Vermont Studio Center, New York State Summer Writers Institute, Soul Mountain, and othershe is theauthor of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books/2010) and The Requited Distance (The Sheep Meadow Press/2011).Her next full-length collection, Mule & Pear, will be published by New Issues Poetry & Prose in fall 2011.

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

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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 absinth 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 Monchengladbach at dawn.

geoffrey nutter was born in Sacramento, and attended San Francisco State University and the IowaWriter's Workshop. He is the author of Christopher Sunset (Wave Books, 2010), Water's Leaves & OtherPoems (Winner of the 2004 Verse Press Prize) and A Summer Evening, winner of the 2001 Colorado Prize(Center for Literary Publishing, 2001). His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, includingThe Best American Poetry 1997, The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries and Isn't It Romantic: 100Poems by Younger American Poets. Geoffrey currently teaches in New York City, where he lives with his wife,daughter and son.

P R E L U D E t O W h A t C O M E S N E x t ✣ 9

“who

—VENúS khOURY-GhAtA, from “She closed her arms . . . ”

watches the boat sail away.”

Coprolite : Tornado : : Turkey Vultures :DARREN MORRIS

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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 distanceat 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 over the country of our sleep. The past made into coprolite, chunks of memory, perforated light,

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

a burst before some soldier’s death.

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

The historic Society of Virginiahas 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.

typically, the vulture hunts silently, alone, just over the earth, sniffing the zones

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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, 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 its benevolence 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, the one called Void, the Brute. he is all encompassing Disdain.he is Vigilance. truth-bearer. Slayer.

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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

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 amor my believing in it? And there, like an answer , thickening in the cumulusat the apex of the earth, at the mouth

of 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 are mulched, the wheat, supplicant, a new trench dug for working, the great tree shed of leaves.

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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 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 Prizeat Passages North.

20 ✣ A N C E S t O R S

Ancestors, Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Photograph based on Aubade with Panopticon by Sally Wen Mao, 2011.

A N C E S t O R S ✣ 21

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

Two PoemsALFONSO D’AqUINOtRANLAtION FROM thE SPANISh BY FORRESt GANDER

El sueño del lobo / intaglio(from Astro Labio)

alfonso d’aquino was born in Mexico City in 1959, is the author of many books, including Viborabreve (Small Viper) and Piedra no piedra (Rock No Rock). At the age of 22, he was awarded the prestigiousCarlos Pellicer Poetry Prize. He makes his living now as an editor, and he teaches occasional poetryworkshops that have become as renowned and influential as those “Poetry as Magic” sessions that JackSpicer conducted at the start of the San Francisco Renaissance.

22

t h E W O L F ’ S D R E A M / I N t A G L I O ✣ 23

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 is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Core Samples from the World,Eye Against Eye, and Science & Steepleflower, all from New Directions, Gander also writes novels (As aFriend), essays (A Faithful Existence) and translates. His most recent translations are Firefly Under theTongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho (Finalist, PEN Translation Prize), No Shelter: Selected Poems of PuraLópez Colomé, and, with Kent Johnson, two books by the Bolivian wunderkind Jaime Saenz: The Night andImmanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz. In 2011, he was awarded the Library of Congress WitterBynner Fellowship. The Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature atBrown University, Gander teaches courses such as Poetry & Phenomenology, EcoPoetics, Latin AmericanDeath Trip, and Translation Theory & Practice.

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）

kIWAO NOMURA

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kiwao nomura Famous for his electrifying performances, Kiwao Nomura is revered in Japan where hehas been awarded major literary honors including the Rekitei Prize for Young Poets and the prestigiousTakami Jun Prize. A first book of his poems in English, translated by Kyoko Yoshida & Forrest Gander, isforthcoming in Spring 2011 from OmniDawn.

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

(nightly we are taken)tRANLAtION FROM thE JAPANESE BY FORRESt GANDER AND kYOkO YOShIDA

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kyoko yoshida’s translations include poems by Kiwao Nomura with Forrest Gander and a play byMasataka Matsuda with Andy Bragen. She is translating "Park City", Matsuda's new play about Hiroshima. A2008 Visiting Scholar at Brown University, she teaches English at Keio University and lives in Yokohama.

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( N I G h t LY W E A R E t A k E N ) ✣ 27

Nighty 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. Lunar boomerang, did I say that?Against the alder tilts a lean-to thatched with branches—a pile of piecesof tree laid over the sleeping bag patterned with bees. Though sleep is aform of hunting, it does not feed. half of my heart forages. half of myheart fumbles for the zipper pull between the wings. Cartridged in small-caliber vines are the grave berries that I should not eat. I already ate them,did I say that? hindsight rips all blear & burnishes the stars into bedfel-lows for some more skilful orienteer. Recklessly is how I kiss my compass.Commuting through the present version of directionless excursion, Ithank untrustworthy fruits & low-slung moons for slinking around thiswild-willed bivouac in a toxic vineyard. Shelters have their own weather.Before mystery tilts into fear, the marsh unloads its mist for another placeto sweetly bear.

cecily parks is the author of Field Folly Snow (University of Georgia Press/VQR Poetry Series, 2008) and thechapbook Cold Work (Poetry Society of America, 2005). Her poems and reviews are forthcoming in BostonReview, The Kenyon Review, and Publishers Weekly. A Ph.D. candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center,she lives in New York.

PalustrineCECILY PARkS

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IThe 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.

IIThe tiny spiral staircasein this corner appears to be moving.

Some experts say it is not.

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

IIIIt’s rare but possible,doctors say, that a man in an enclosure

Recent Findingsafter the cells of Louise Bourgeois

IDRA NOVEY

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can bite into a mirrorand turn it to stone.

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

Vtoo 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 an American poet, professor, and translator. She is author of The Next Country (Alice JamesBooks, 2008), which was a Kinereth Gensler Award winner, and the translation The Clean Shirt of It, whichwon a PEN Translation Fund Award, and has had her poems, translations and reviews published in Slate, TheParis Review, AGNI Online, Ploughshares, BOMB, Mid-American Review, and The Believer. Novey teaches inthe creative writing program at Columbia University, and is the executive director of the Columbia Centerfor Literary Translation. She also teaches in the Bard College Prison Initiative. She is a member of the AliceJames Books Cooperative Board, an editor for Rattapallax, and lives in New York.

30 ✣ 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 was born in Jamaica in 1963. She earned her B.A. in English from Williams Collegeand her M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of AmericanPoetry, the National Endowments for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation, she is currently the Henry G. LeeProfessor of English at Pomona College. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Don't LetMe Be Lonely (Graywolf, 2004); PLOT (2001); The End of the Alphabet (1998); and Nothing in Nature is Private(1995), which received the Cleveland State Poetry Prize.

Situation 8 (from Provenance)

CLAUDIA RANkINE

31

“these photographs were taken in Shanxi Province in northwest China. They docu-mented the ancient customs, which originate from original pagan religious beliefs. Theyare the product of Ancient voodoo totem worship.

In the past, people used to worship the gods of religious activities. today a number ofthese customs have survived to remain one of the most important cultural practices inthe Lunar New Year throughout most of Shanxi Province northwest China. to my per-sonal observation, they set themselves a drama stage, dressed into stunning costumesand have their faces painted exquisitely to represent the identity of each different Gods.

ShanxiPortfolio

zhANG xIAO

zhang xiao Male, born on November 23rd, 1981, in Yantai, Shandong Province, China. 2005 July,graduated from Yantai University, Art Design of Architecture Department. 2005 September–2009 June,worked as a photographer for Chongqing Morning Post. Now is a freelance photographer, Work and live inChengdu, Sichuan Province, China.

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S h A N x I ✣ 43

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 halves

Aubade with PanopticonDecember 12, 2010

SALLY WEN MAO

44

sally wen mao Sally Wen Mao is an 826 Valencia Young Author's Scholar and a Kundiman fellow. Herwork can be found published or forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, SycamoreReview, and West Branch, among others. Born in Wuhan, China, she has lived in Boston, the Bay Area,Pittsburgh, Amsterdam, and most recently Ithaca, where she is an MFA candidate at Cornell University.

What if in this moment I am a machine that buries all warningsAnd 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 ✣ 45

46 ✣ S A D R A P t U R E

S A D R A P t U R E ✣ 47

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 rope my alleen na Bet-alsê Elia, die man met die ligte vel

maar Elisa sê : zowaar die here leefzowaar as daar asem in my ligaam 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 : zowaar die here Leefzowaar as daar asem in my ligaam 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 : zowaar die here Leefzowaar as daar asem in my ligaam beefek verlaat jou nie

two was Elia radeloosElisa wou nie weg nie, Elisa wou nie skeiElisa het soos 'n skadu op sy spoor gebly...

Three PoemsADAM SMALLtRANLAtION FROM thE JAPANESE BY MIkE DICkMAN

48

maar toe word die here self vireo Elisa boos

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

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

✣

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

E k S E G E S E I ✣ 49

50 ✣ E x E G I S I S I

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

E x E G I S I S I ✣ 51

—for the Lord is with his own, come what maythe Lord left his own need in the lurch—

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

52 ✣ E V A N G E L I S A S I E V E R S L A G

EvangelisasieverslagTen little Nigger Boys went to Jo'burg

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

twee vier zes 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 hullen wemel?

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

ons wou nege klein kaffertjies neem na die hemelhoeveel is daar nie as die land van hullen 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 bezig om revolutie aan te voor!—en een het selfs met 'n wit vrou laat spat

E V A N G E L I S A S I E V E R S L A G ✣ 53

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

nogtans, vir dié groot taakmoet ons ons lewe gee

✣

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

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!—

54 ✣ E V A N G I L I S A t I O N R E P O R t

and one even skedaddled with a white girl

(but far overseas,o far overseas)…

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

E V A N G I L I S A t I O N R E P O R t ✣ 55

56 ✣ LY D I N G S W E G

Lydingsweg

Ons het lankal in plekkesoes Windemereal ons verlangensafgeleer

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

altyd as ek na dieoeg to gaandan dink ek na die brylofin kana

maar ons het lankal in plekkesoes Windemereal ons verlangensafgeleer

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

maar here djy kan maar lysterna ons liedsonner worry, ons is lankal

verby vadriet

so moenie worry nie hereek is opgafixek is my eie hereen dan is ons twie kietsprik ‘n anner gêng se mannemy eendag vol snyegat ek sterwe aan my eiekrys vi’ myne

o al lankal in plekkesoes Windemerehet ons al ons verlangensafgeleer

all lankal in plekkesoes Windemereal ons verlangensafgeleer

LY D I N G S W E G ✣ 57

58 ✣ P A t h O F S U F F ’ R I N G

Path of Suff’ring

Longtime already in placeslike Windemerewe dumpedall our yearnings

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

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

but already longtime in placeslike Windemerewe dumpedall our yearnings

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

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

so you mussen worry Lord

P A t h O F S U F F ’ R I N G ✣ 59

I’m all fix upI’m my own Lordso then we quitsprick some other gang’s menmy someday full of cutsI’m gunna die alonescream out f’ mine

o longtime already in placeslike Windemerewe dumpedall our yearnings

longtime already in placeslike Windemereall our yearningsdumped

adam small (born in Wellington, Western Cape on December 21, 1936) is a South African writer who wasinvolved in the Black Consciousness Movement and other activism. He is noted as a "coloured" writer whowrote works in Afrikaans that dealt with racial discrimination and satirized the political situation. Somecollections include English poems, and he translated the Afrikaans poet N P van Wyk Louw into English.

mike dickman was born in South Africa and spent most of the first third of his life there, plying—whenthe time for such came—the trades of musician/singer–songwriter, bookstore manager and teacher of t'ai chich'uan. He moved to France in 1981 and he has lived there 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. A website containing a selection ofhis translations and ‘englishings’ and some of his own poetry may be found at:

60 ✣ M Y S O M E D A Y F U L L O F C U t S

M Y S O M E D A Y F U L L O F C U t S ✣ 61

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 sheets

and 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 PoemsVENúS khOURY-GhAtAtRANLAtION FROM thE FRENCh BY MARILYN hACkER

62

S h E C L O S E D h E R A R M S A N D h E R S h U t t E R t O k E E P t h E O D O R . . . ✣ 63

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 oncethe 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

64 ✣ R E A D I N G W A S t E S W O R D S A N D M A k E S C O N C E N t R A t I O N B O I L . . .

Lebanese poet and novelist, long-time Paris resident vénus khoury-ghata is the author of seventeennovels, including Une Maison aux bord des larmes, La Maestra, and La fille qui marchait dans le désert.,andfifteen collections of poems, most recently Quelle est la nuit parmi les nuits (Mercure de France, 2006). Four col-lections of her poems and one novel are available in English in Marilyn Hacker’s translation. Recipient of theAcadémie Française prize in poetry in 2009, she was named an Officer of the Légion d’honneur the followingyear. The poems in this issue 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(Carcanet Press, 2006)). Among her translations from the French are Marie Etienne’s King of a HundredHorsemen which received the 2009 American PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Vénus Khoury-Ghata’sAlphabets of Sand (Carcanet Press, 2008) and Nettles (Graywolf Press, 2008). She is a Chancellor of the Academyof American Poets.

A t N I G h t A L L W O R D S W E R E B L A C k ✣ 65

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

ああ私たちはそこに欲望を解消することもできたのに

—kIWAO NOMURA, from (夜ごと私たちは連れていかれる）

“his skull bya police bullet cracked”

—ADAM SMALL, from Evangelisaieverslag

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.

RecurrenceRAChEL ELIzA GRIFFIthS

68

R E C U R R E N C E ✣ 69

Even when you left me for another woman.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’s literary and visual work has been widely published in journals, magazines,anthologies, and periodicals. Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, writer, photographer, and painter. A Cave CanemFellow, she received the MA in English Literature from the University of Delaware and the MFA in CreativeWriting from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the recipient of fellowships including Provincetown Fine Arts WorkCenter, Vermont Studio Center, New York State Summer Writers Institute, Soul Mountain, and othershe is theauthor of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books/2010) and The Requited Distance (The Sheep Meadow Press/2011).Her next full-length collection, Mule & Pear, will be published by New Issues Poetry & Prose in fall 2011.

70 ✣ R E C C U R A N C E

R E C C U R A N C E ✣ 71

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 youshould’ve known. There is a key underneath the doormat, and you should’veknown. When I was young there were plants that lined our walkway. Oneday I saw a snake move from one plant to another and disappear like a lightbeing turned off, a coil of green being spit from leaves. At school, I told thechildren that it was poisonous, that I reached my hand into the leaves toget the key that we kept hidden in the mulch so I could open the door andrun upstairs without saying hello to my mother because she is not home. Ican run up those stairs faster than anyone; hands over feet. This is the houseI grew up in. There were fourteen stairs that I counted every time I randown them. In my sleep I crawled up bookcases; feet touching pages docu-menting how to make a rocket, lessons on giving, lessons on not giving. Goto sleep. Open sleep. There is a photograph of me standing in front of thedoor on my way to school. I cannot remember how our kitchen looked. Icannot remember how our bathroom looked. I used to live in a hallway. Mybed was a boat and I would draw on the windows in crayon mornings beforechurch, before I was lifted up from under my arms and brought down tothe ground. Pick up child. I was in love with insulation but it would makeme itch. There are sheets for my bed. There is a cast for my arm. I would sitin the darkness of the attic to learn what darkness is. We cannot use theword kill. It must be changed. There are neighbors here. The man next dooris 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 and sometimes the quails escape. Everyone within a five-mile radius is going to die if I press the button. This is where the magic hap-pens. This is where the heart is. Ring the doorbell. The door is locked andyou should’ve known. My mother is not a person—she is my mother. Theyare a building a house nearby. My father is not a person—he is my father. Ithrew rocks in the air and I hurt someone. They are not people—they shouldbe home and they are not. There is no key hidden here; this is not a home.

Maniac MansionBRIAN OLIU

72

M A N I A C M A N S I O N ✣ 73

I would come here, amongst the gray siding and garbage dumpsters, thewooden stairs, the white walls and collect candy. There are so many familiesand 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 streetwas named after a bird that I had never heard of, a kingbird, a tyrant. Ahockey game swirls on cinderblocks and we are sad. There was no basementhere, no attic. Go to loose brick. You learn quickly that you can operate atone speed here; there is no button to hold down that causes legs to moveany faster, the background to scroll in reverse at any greater speed. There isno outrunning the nurse at the refrigerator. There is no getting to the door.There is a strategy here that involves the hero getting caught and pressingthe brick and trying to run for the door. Go to door. The door is locked andyou should’ve known. There are three of us. Press the brick and let the otherout. I remember nothing about the house where I lived before I lived there.There is a photograph I have seen of me holding my body up by pressingmy hand into a wall. It is dark; there is a light. This is where I lived, at theend of this hallway. My first memory was not this. Stand by the brick andpress the brick. I am not scared of the dark. There is no gas for the chainsaw.In this house that is not a house is a grandfather clock that moves like a ter-ror. The boy with the blue skin has the same name as my father. The boywith 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 needto be written down—I have memorized my phone number and it has notchanged despite changes in ceilings. I want you to come to my house. Pleasecome to my house. I am proud of you, house. There is a cheerleader in myhouse. There is a bully in my house. We will learn about the beatitudes andthey 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 houseis growing smaller with every new color. The deck is peeling. There is a holewhere the horse went through. I was the only one home when it happened.There were no dogs. This house looks smaller without walls. My room existswithout walls. My father and I stuff wires into electrical boxes and eat soupcooked on a fire. We press tiles onto the floor while watching television.The sawdust sticks to our shirts. We see the dogs. A horse walked up to ourdoor. Go to door, horse. The horse’s leg snapped—I heard it crack like a tree,like peppermint. I was home. Walk to. What is.

brian oliu is originally from New Jersey and is currently receiving his MFA from the University ofAlabama. His work has been featured in Swink and is forthcoming in the New Ohio Review.

the forest of illness is gray. Sometimes it emits a harrowing whisper. Itcan’t be called voice, impossible to make out any sort of message in it. It issilence actively kept, the body of muteness, gnawed by animals, abandoned.

You pass between vacant collapsed stone houses, pavilions, yards, shaftafter shaft, walls cold and ice-colder, half-wrecked administration buildings,culverts (caved in, filled with earth), windy empty corridors, old body ofearth, earth eyes, memory’s inexhaustible blacked-out labyrinth. Under theveil of darkness no face, lips. At night they call to me. Then they visit me in adream. In the dream they move with my movements, the mute voice then isthe voice that exists

what the world is like. They take the blame for me.The madhouse is black. Inside the marvelous faces make their appear-

ance and live.They rise up from the general body of blame, from the murderous gluti-

nous walls they emerge like growths composed of some entirely un-known, fresh and clear organic matter, out of blame they grow like therose 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 deadtrees, hard gravel. Within their eyes in the black misty well of their gazethe mountain of the transfiguration appears, out into the radiant muteunknown now they walk and walk

Those who take the blame for meBIRGIttA tROtzIGtRANLAtION FROM thE SWEDISh BY RIkA LESSER

birgitta trotzig (September 11, 1929–May 14, 2011) was one of Sweden's most renowned modernwriters, having written several novels in which she gave voice to her Catholic faith (though her perspective issaid to have been existential rather than Christian) and her dark visions. Returning themes are the death andresurrection of love. Among her novels are Sjukdomen ("The Illness") (made into the movie Kejsaren, "TheEmperor," in 1979) and Dykungens dotter ("The Mud King's daughter") (1985). She also wrote essays andarticles on poetry, and works of prose poems: Anima (1982) and Sammanhang ("Contexts") (1996).

Born in Brooklyn, New York, rika lesser is a poet and translator of Swedish and German literature. She isthe author of four collections of poetry. She has also published selections of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (Rilke:Between Roots, Princeton, 1986) and Hermann Hesse (Hours in the Garden and Other Poems, Farrar, Straus, &Giroux, 1979), and various works of fiction and nonfiction.

74

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

75

76 ✣ O J A L á

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.

E L P A í S ✣ 77

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, winner of the2011 Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award, and an Honorable Mention at the San Francisco BookFestival and the New England Book Festival. The New York Times says it is “a book that trembles with belonging(and longing).” She is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, a Fundación Araguaney Fellow, recipient of the Alejo ZuloagaOrder in Literature 2011, and an Honored Finalist for the Gift of Freedom Award. She writes the blog-column, TheCity and The Writer, for Words without Borders magazine. Her new collection, Poet in Andalucía is forthcoming.

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

IIIhe asked her with jaracanda tree in his hand. If he says he lovesher 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.

VYou 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

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M E x I C A N P R A Y E R S ✣ 79

VIIhere 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 ash trees with your feet. Palms, sacrificed pineapples. Dusters, elevated mummified

peacock trees.They grow on streets into houses. Which stride high in the ceilings. The acrobats of the unreachable. We pass high wire streets. The tunes of hurdy-gurdy. Under our feet, 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. Divine metonymy. Vital Martyrs.

VIIIThe earth is a quadrangle floating on a great body of water. In the center rises a sacred

mountain with a cave at the entrance of which grows a ceiba tree. Who is he who holds a jaguar

head? Saints are fully in their gacaranda trees, in love with purples. On a tree a peackock sits. Yet another apparition of the Madonna. Rumors on photographic plates. Sunset, a splash of a red turtle. Frogs dressed in blue, sacrificed and roasted.

IXAt 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

XItriangular blossom on your tilma—is both a heart with its arteries and a flowerand 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

80 ✣ M E x I C A N P R A Y E R S

XIIIMorenita. Mother of mestizi, productsof 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 writes both in Polish and English. In 2003 Studium published her first book in Polish.Her second book in Polish: Sopilki came out in Dec 2009. She has won the 2009 international book contest forher book in English, Strata, which was published with Emergency Press in March 2011 in the United States. Herpoems have appeared in three anthologies and were also featured in Boston Review, Colorado Review, Jubilat,Spoon River Review, Aufgabe, Spoon River Review, Omnidawn blog, Process, Lana Turner, Mandorla, Rhino,American Letters and Commentary, Poetry Wales (GB), Aesthetica (GB). Her translations of poetry appeared innumerous journals and two anthologies of Polish poetry in English translations: Carnivorous Boy, CarnivorousBird and Six Polish Poets. She is a Professor of Humanities at Colby-Sawyer College.