Under Black Sails
questioning why the fog’s green
is my goodnight to the godless
and my good evening
to a hasty summer
of trains that don’t run on time
and rain that always wants to be first
with the freshest of the fresh
so the dance can bloom
on the great sloom’s deck
as it heads straight into a glare of cold
where the comatose lie
awaiting passage home to the dull life
the superficial love
because they don’t think
there’s anything else
when a person can’t be
like a garbage truck in paradise
that’s forgotten its way
to the incinerator
***
Red-Hot Day
a red-hot day
under slanting walls
where book dust
phlegm and words
rally to the beat
of a heart
that wants out
to go sledding
and then pound
inside the snowman
it built
to that end
***
Dry Snow
when you cross the line
without leaving any tracks
for the sun to strike
and the hounds to run
you become barbed wire
snagging bird wings
and children start singing muffled songs
in dreams that take after this
***
Glass
he drives
his glass truck
gingerly
while delivering
yet another pane
to replace
the smashed window
at the house
where poems
are condemned
*****
Tóroddur Poulsen (1957) is a pioneering poet, graphic artist, and musician. He grew up in Tórshavn, the capital city of the Faroe Islands, during a period of intense socioeconomic and cultural transition. Since his literary debut in Varðin, Poulsen has published nearly forty books and become an inimitable force in Nordic literature. His colorful reading style and rebellious alter ego, The Garage God, have earned him a reputation as the “Punk Poet” of the Faroe Islands. He has twice received the M.A. Jacobsen Literature Award and recently won the Faroe Islands’ most prestigious cultural prize, Mentanarvirðisløn Landsins. Katrin Ottarsdóttir’s film, A Line A Day Must Be Enough (2008), documents the day-to-day life of Tóroddur Poulsen as well as his complicated relationship with his native archipelago.
Randi Ward is a writer, translator, lyricist, and photographer from West Virginia. She earned her MA in Cultural Studies from the University of the Faroe Islands and is a recipient of The American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize. Ward is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in Asymptote, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, World Literature Today, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vencil: Anthology of Contemporary Faroese Literature, and other publications. For more information, visit her personal website.