Suicide Prevention Hotline
after Lu Yu
One late afternoon in April David strayed into the Mississippi everglades and was gathered to his ancestors in relative silence – We never knew his last name
At a nondescript December sunrise Jason took flight over the metallic limbs of his red Kawasaki and smashed against the vandalized walls of a Tennessee highway rest stop – He couldn't hear us calling
After a long night just north of Tallahassee DC turns off the monitor walks past the fish stands to the docks leans against the giant columns and watches as the ocean's green hills hurl themselves into the twilight − When his phone rings he takes his sweet time answering
From an Airplane
after Juan Comte
As far as the eye can see – human traces In those boxes over there men and women seek shelter from heat cold faithlessness On that patch of green one side won the other side lost and the bodies lay frozen all through the winter
Everywhere signs scratched in the dirt The oceans are a lifeless heaven with every once in a while white shapeless gashes You have to stare for a long time to even know what you see
Where smoke rises someone's being loved or neglected Things personal to me are marked too – there you first spoke to me here I grew close to your daughter The land the city the neighborhood the house the places where we never found peace
Winter Map of Montreal
after José Oliver
My dark apartment over a stripclub under its red-striped awning the proprietor reading a day old Post and Mail – Corner of St Denis and Rachel at the very spot (I tell myself) Leonard Cohen once courted a whore
Now and then I set out into the darkness in search of the shellshock On the fire escapes I find plenty of metal on metal on the sandblasted façades of the boutiques plenty of shine Collapsible windows in service of the short summer Silent windows like that other silence in the snow Here's an unnamed square here a shut-up bus station All the shrouded necks and chins the biographies for which I invent – the cafeterias and dépanneurs mere backdrops for their undocumented dramas
Neon signs in a forbidden mundane tongue Sometimes I escort a brother Indian through the harbor district after a short prayer in Notre-Dame (with what reluctance I surrender the dollar and a half entry fee) I know there's a blue light over Chengdu And Jerusalem? Who will transport that blue light here? Today was April The skyline sank into the ribs of the snow
Religion Lesson
after Heather O'Neill
I hold a grasshopper in my cupped hand and peer at it precisely with one wide open eye A grasshopper is nothing but a safety needle that believes in god God has a mustache and tucks his pant cuffs into his rubber boots so his feet don't get wet God dyes his graying hair so that he doesn't look overly reverent I know this There's just so much kitsch in the world and if we were all made in his image he must look a little silly God has bad callouses and gives exact instructions though he seems to be as confused as we are as to what exactly our office here is
Sailors Dying of Scurvy
after Juan Comte
A piece of skin in the shape of a maple leaf peeled off my arm last night though it didn't bleed much Covered in reeking sores and a yellowy puss that sticks to the sheets I'm still not as bad off as Taylor two bunks down who after his nose came off a couple days ago has almost no face left at all The doctors say we're paying for our trespasses that this comes from following those dark skeletal girls into their shanties or from the lecherous nights with each other but I never touched another man and the only mistress I almost knew broke down in tears at the sight of my limp penis Three more corpses will be dumped overboard at dawn I'm not sure who's manning my ropes or where this ship is heading – back to the Dutch port where my sister will come out to meet her crippled brother pretending not to be disgusted by his stinking flesh or on into the merchant night where man sells his brother for a few guns and the sins of the fathers are taken up by their sons where we clench the iron bunk frames through the heaving darkness praying like anything that the sea won't run out on us
Death in the Afternoon
after Ernest Hemingway
From the breakroom wafts a sick sweet stench that turns out to be the soft-drink manager now lying completely lifeless on the office floor for the paramedics to collect Jake goes on unloading the last case of Dr Pepper while I watch over the body
Six Imitations
Stanislaw Borokowski
translated from the German by Chris Michalski
Listen to 'From an Airplane' in the original German read by the author:
The main challenge for the translator of Stanislaw Borokowski's poetry is to somehow convey the inhabited stillness of the texts as well as the vivid characters and scenes that he brings to life in them. In translating his work I have strived to recreate both the subtle emotion and sense of otherness that is characteristic of his style in German. Working directly with the author has, at the same time, allowed for a greater freedom than might otherwise be possible. Wherever we felt the English to not quite match the evocative force of the German, we have modified the text, so that there are quite a few departures in meaning. This, however, only really coincides with the author's own technique, as the German texts here are in fact free recreations of the work of other writers.
Stanislaw Borokowski was born in Poland behind the Iron Curtain and emigrated to Austria as a child. His work has been published in German-language journals and anthologies, including, most recently, the 2011 edition of the Jahrbuch der Lyrik (Best German Poetry) and Ort der Augen. His blog Postkarten an Michail Gorbatschow enjoyed a cult following during the time of its publication and has recently been released as an art book.
Chris Michalski has had original work and translations featured in such publications as The Massachusetts Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, International Poetry Review, elimae.com and Trickhouse Parlour.
