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!
Translated by JULIA SANCHES
1.
It begins with her saying I’ve never told anyone and ends with me saying Neither have I. And in between, a single sentence on how the love we feel for a child is not necessarily immediate, on how we need time to get to know and fall in love with another being, even though they were once inside us. We talk over the phone; this may never have happened face-to-face, or as we looked one another in the eye.
By HÉLIO PÓLVORA
Translated by AMANDA SARASIEN
The sea was unfurling bolts of cotton on the beach.
But now, at least in this cove, the sea is muddy. The waves sprawling on the sand, under the spotlight of an intense sun, exhibit a strange hue—a corrupt, corrosive red that might be called ocher, as if the sea, in its incessant flow, had passed through steep, muddy ravines before subsiding here, and dislodged clumps of earth that dissolved to contaminate green water, bluish water.
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.
She had been dead nearly a decade before she sought me out. I was in my late twenties when she first came to me; then, again and again over a period of several years, whenever I came home to visit and always in the middle of the night as I slept in my old room. Before it was mine, it was hers. In the recurring dream or vision, I opened my eyes to darkness and knew I was not alone. She stood in the far corner by the closet, waiting for something. The air between us, a conduit—even from across the room, I felt her body tingling my skin. You don’t always have to see a thing to know it exists.
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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