The mansion where Gone with the Wind was written sits up on blocks
like a trailer, underpinnings exposed, like a trailer, trucked down a road,
relocated from one county to another that also can’t afford its restoration,
a green curtain of vines drawing over the decay. What should stay?
and the amazed girls saw their bodies equipped with golden plumage, and the wings and feet of birds
I turn over the soil, my son chattering beside me. He wants to talk about time, its intransigency and evasions. Our hands breaking up the clumps, pulling out old roots.
If not for the lust of women, there would be no alphabet.
Save for the breaking of traffic rules, there would be
no Cubism; no fractured light scrutinized from subways
or kaleidoscopes in the tool belts of surveyors.
By IAIN TWIDDY
As if he was pelting for a winter,
his hair returning, the closer he gets,
to that flossy, watchful, infant softness,
like the idea of an angel’s wing;
By CRISTINA CARLOS
Translated by JETHRO SOUTAR
At school I learned to count—one plus one is two
I learned to multiply—one times one is one
And subtract—one minus me is zero: Nothing!
By JARID ARRAES
Translated by MARGUERITE ITAMAR HARRISON
tell me
about how tough everything is
and even the beer’s out of reach
and even writing has dried up
tell me
The royal palms bathe in the soft warm air
of February and everywhere I look there is the play
of glittering afternoon light—on store windows
and metal bistro tables, on the well-polished
always white Mercedes and Lexuses, on the sorbet
pinks and oranges and lime greens of faux-Spanish
buildings. The most ordinary things here seem
By PETER COOLEY
So much for the wound in me
seeking a piebald answer
in the tulip’s streak cataracted by first frost,
the blue jay flapping across the grass,
one-winged, his flying
this crawl through blades he hues,
tenor and vehicle this bird and me,
both of us trying to accept
such ritual exchange.
By MATILDE CAMPILHO
Translated by HUGO DOS SANTOS
for José
On the night Billy Ray was born
(New York, 28th and 7th)
not one soul contemplated the geraniums
There was, however, the sound of the world falling
like multiple stalactites
in the area surrounding the hospital
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