By TIMOTHY WATT
Long ago I found myself in a dark wood wandering, a tale-teller with no tale to tell. How I’d come to be in that place, I don’t know. I was there shivering, empty, trying and failing to remember the tales I’d told, in times past, in ages before. I couldn’t remember any of them, much as I tried to conjure characters in the throes of a verb, scenes in rooms, conversations, anecdotes, themes. And soon after—I don’t know when, time like the night was monochrome and either too rapid in its passing to be tracked at all, or statuesque, cold and still—I found I no longer knew what a tale itself was, its contours and constituent parts, its reasons, its design. It was then I heard a slow crashing in the timber behind me. I did not look up. There was nothing consoling to be seen. Before me stretched a vast lake, a lake whose color rendered all previous understandings of black, blue, a lake of terrifying calm. The surface was glass, unrippled and hulkingly silent, and the lake did not lap against any of its shores. It was—I see it now—a body of water in an attitude of petrifaction.
Issues
Zijnstra Inc.
Translated by JACQUELYN POPE
In love everything is possible. You doggedly
paper a tree with roses
and say: this was the place
and everyone who passes should
The Smuggler
Translated by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV
I wore the same checkered coat for six winters in a row. It had once been warm and even elegant in its way, but then developed holes and faded. Whether because the cotton lining had become matted or because the outer cloth had worn thin from wind and rain, the garment no longer gave any warmth. I felt cold even in reasonably warm weather. Wind would penetrate it in unpredictable spots, now chilling my waist, now freezing my shoulder blades, as if someone had thrown a piece of ice behind my collar. When one time I arrived at the Kolosovs all soaked and melancholy with hunger, Ivan hung my coat on the kitchen radiator and scratched the back of his head.
Macario
By JUAN RULFO
Translated by ILAN STAVANS and HAROLD AUGENBRAUM
I’m sitting by the sewer waiting for the frogs to come out. Last night, while we were having dinner, they started kicking up a huge ruckus and didn’t stop singing until dawn. That’s what my godmother says, too: that the frogs’ shouting scared her sleep away. And she’d like to sleep now. That’s why she told me to sit here, near the sewer, waiting with a board in my hand so that I can smash to smithereens any frog that hops out … Frogs are green all over, except for their bellies. Toads are black. My godmother’s eyes are black, too. Frogs are good to eat. You shouldn’t eat toads; but I’ve eaten them, too, though you’re not supposed to, and they taste the same as frogs.
Survivor
By JACQUELYN POPE
Whatever possessed you
pursues me. Whatever
unnerved you sings me
to sleep, repeats and repeats,
insists. Whatever composed
you constricts me. Where
you were bright I was blind.
Miss Ohio Teaches You to Drive
By CORINNA MCCLANAHAN SCHROEDER
Follow the serpentine river roads
toward the Little Miami’s lip. Pass through
the sycamore trunks, their whitewashed
limbs. See how they molt their skins.
Tattoo
By ROSANNA OH
As you undo the cuff links in your shirt,
the waiter taps me on the shoulder
and tells me that we are the last customers.
Your fish is cold.
I am waiting in the restaurant, thinking you have gone to piss—
instead, I order dessert
as you press yourself against the sink,
scratching at my name,
scouring me with water and soap.
Religion
By CRALAN KELDER
either you feel it or you don’t and I don’t feel a thing, nothing at all,
except I do feel a great warmth standing in the window in the front
of the sun and I think how fucking great it is to be alive I could almost
cry standing there watching the trees pollinating each other
Boys
By CRALAN KELDER
when the boys came over
theo with his banjo david
brought his voice we set
some poems to music
berrigan’s Train Ride &
the one about his old house
that he would miss and
California
By CRALAN KELDER
During this past visit to California, I visited a friend who has been incarcerated since 1985 – for 25 years. In prison, he isn’t allowed to physically handle money, so when we take a break from walking laps around the visiting room and get in line by the vending machines to treat ourselves to hot drinks, he has to stay behind a red line with
OUT OF BOUNDS