Selected Poems
by Tereza Riedlbauchová
Translated from the Czech by Stephan Delbos
When she came from abroad I was waiting for her
she was startled she sat on the stool behind the door
bent her legs and hugged them she had dark blue knees
Fight and Pride: Our Stonewall
by Lyosha Gorshkov
My past, or my imagined past if you will, was brutally erased overnight by the goblins of traditional values poisoning Russia with homosexual panic and the exploitation of its darkest servants: the Government, Law Enforcement, the Church and Propaganda.
Any Icarus
by Karla Marrufo Huchim
Translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese
i never knew her name
but i watched her die in the clearest instant
heard her body
open, the crack of bones
at the end of her agony,
Wonderlust in Motion
by María Negroni
Translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese
When I return to my castle of origin, I will write a nocturne with a clair de lune and call it My Poetic Astronomy. I will imbue it with the excitement of the night, as it has been recorded over centuries--with its priestesses, its crimes, its waters that cross the borders of the world and disappear into nothing.
BR(AVE TO)EXIT
by Giulia Medaglini
The name is Julia but not as in the English spelling. Pretty Woman came out when I was born but it was dubbed in my country, you know? Nyet. Not even Yulia. It’s spelled with the “G” of grit and the “I” of incomer. Like that. Sì.
Books & Depression. It’s easier than you think
It lasts for more than a year: I can't read, that is, I can, but I don't want to. My appetite is already gone halfway into the book. I count every page I have read and still need to read. I can't wait for the count to show 0. Books surround me everywhere: they are my job, and without them, I am nobody. I feel like an old, impotent man among many beautiful women, none of whom he can fuck.
LitTransformer, a translation workshop in Lviv, connects UNESCO CITIES OF LITERATURE
Interviewed by Hanna Leliv
During the collaboration, each translator functioned as both the capable guide (in their native language) and the novice traveler (in their peer’s language).
The benefit of reading is like oxygen. You cannot smell it but you will suffocate without it.
by Justina Dobush
Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka
You read and read and read. You love some and you love others. Žižek says not to love the new hysterical left, Peterson says to love yourself, not to love feminists or the same new hysterical left. The New York Times says to read about people's rights, Trump says to read Twitter, Putin says not to read anything at all. Zuckerberg tells Cambridge Analytica to read other people’s messages, Islamists say to read the Quran, the Ministry of Justice doesn't read the constitution, the younger generation reads only Telegram and Instagram.
“My literature has many sacred layers that even I cannot always decipher”: An Interview with Khrystia Vengryniuk
Interviewed by Kate Tsurkan
The constant reading of the Bible opens up more and more to you; sometimes, you just fall into a stupor. This Book is endless and the only one that you can and should read all your life.
An excerpt from the novel "Your Gaze, Cio-Cio-San"
by Andriy Lyubka
Translated from the Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
That December evening, fog had to settle on Uzhhorod, a drunk judge at the wheel of a BMW X5 had to be flying along the slick asphalt of Hrushevskiy Street, staring at his phone—he didn’t notice, didn’t react, didn’t brake—and slam into my wife’s tender, 115-pound body with two tons of black metal, and she had to flutter into the air and land on the ground, already dead, and that damn German airbag simply had to pop out and save the driver, for me, twenty-nine years into my life, to finally have a real purpose.
Brooklyn, Forty-Second Street
by Vasyl Makhno
Translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins
Brooklyn’s Forty-Second Street in Borough Park is unenticing and monotone, as are the rest of the surrounding streets. In the winter, it’s cleaner than in the summer. In the fall, it’s warmer than in the spring. The industrial zones on the shores of New York Harbor—Sunset Park and Green-Wood Cemetery—cling to it like tipsy bridesmaids so that, God forbid, it not give them the slip. It’s intersected—or, more precisely, interrupted—by the Mexican Fifth, the Chinese Eighth, and the Hasidic Thirteenth Avenues, and in one spot the metal structure of the subway that covers all of New Utrecht hangs above it.
An excerpt from the novel "Cartagena"
by Lena Eltang
Translated from the Russian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
When I was a little girl, I thought time was like a ball; what we call the past is still happening, concurrently with our present lives. It’s just on the other side of the ball, and if you find the right tunnel, you can descend into times past and take a look at the people who lived them. For me, olive trees were tunnels like that—after all, they live for about two thousand years. It’s nice to think you’re touching the same trunk as one of the Argonauts who landed at Salerno. It’s a real shame my teachers disabused me of that notion; if they hadn’t, I’d be free to think that little Brie was still out there somewhere, walking down his own path.
Long Distance Death
by Brinda Banerjee
Andre Zachalenko, the apartment complex super, stomped in the front door at number 102, determined to project displeasure at being dragged out on that rainy morning to do his job. He inhaled the aroma of cinnamon, cloves and fried onions in the air. His native Russian cooking smells were vastly different.
Free Verse for Never-Fading Memories
by Georgi Atanassov
Translated from the Bulgarian by Elitza Kotzeva
Sixty years ago
In Lom they were killing all crows.
They’d sign a paper
to get a handgun
with an ammo box.
The New Slaves
by Vania Valkova
Translated from the Bulgarian by Elitza Kotzeva
The new slaves are abundantly obedient
Socialize politely in slow-tedious style, yet
Always have their nails exquisitely done
and well charged robots full of smiles to don.
Apologia for a death threat sent at 4 in the morning to another Russian Jewish poet
by Vladislav Davidzon
If broken, a law of mesira
is a mortifying plume
writing denunciations is no art
high incidence of illiterates
involved in
regressed resplendence
bony spinster's joints
"Expandable" and other poems
by Diana Manole
What else do you want? The crisis centres’ phone numbers already blink
on oversized billboards
at both ends of the bridges
above six-lane highways crossing cities to prevent traffic delays
during rush hours.
"Crime of a Lily" and other poems
by Stephan Roll
Translated from the Romanian by Henry Finch
In the moonlight your eye lacks a pupil
But flowers you lead by hand
Inverse praying to the consecrated saints
Like the taste of the fountain’s black stones
