Silence. The focus was to be sharp, but the boys ran out of shot.
Waging wars against milk and cats, late already.
Let them be, the set empty but for knives and trainers tossed in the grass.
OFF_press
Contemporary Polish Writing in Translation
It’s winter 1988. The first time I’m home alone
and scared of answering the phone. The model Spitfire
is still drying, its badly set undercarriage
doing the sideways splits. Outside the window, a snowy monument
– night, the lady of both tides. The silence
The Western wind stroked
the horizon, our village suddenly Siberian.
Wires moaning, hair stiffening, extinguished.
I only hope I don’t go the way of the neighbour’s veiltail,
which dissolved in its icy bowl
like a speck of bubbling aspirin.
Catullus loved you, shameless bird,
You were his lady’s pet.
You heard her dainty breathing, perched
Beside her when she slept;
Catullus
That Catallus sparrow grew into a right little shit.
Read the rest of this entry »
“be still be calm be quiet now my precious boy
don’t struggle like that or I will only love you more”
the light bulb like a giant sac
swelling for ages has
broken and spilled all over the walls
its impossibly yellow innards
all is sticky with ease
draws in and unsettles
And so, what you really want to tell me
is that I am now the old times. Yes,
the present does not correspond to the past,
or, what’s worse, does not let itself be invited
for coffee and cultured conversation.
Read the rest of this entry »
I would blow
a whole hundred on you at the milk bar.
We would eat through a sea of tomato soup
and leave the dinner ladies 99zl in tips.
Motto:
“Don’t hold it against me, for I must tell the truth about the dead even,
to make the living fall in love with the real dead…”
Juliusz Slowacki, Letter to mother, Paris 1845
1
I don’t know who told him to stand
and wait, holding a swath of red and a brush of rabbit fur
[rabbi forgive, I will wipe your face clean].
certainly not he, who was here before me and dug in the rain.
we spent all day traipsing round town
biting our lips
towers of smoke rising over the gas works
and sleet falling
I could have cut your head off any time I liked
and tossed it into the frozen river
along the Barbican as if knight-errants
we seek glimpses of bygone
men in bowler hats
ladies with umbrellas telling of trends
in the fashion house on Freta
“You have endless ways you can commit suicide without ‘dying’ dying.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
You’re not half bad, I must admit.
A suck and swallow, as rendered by you
Really is as dreamy as a fuck up the shitter.
Let’s call it a compliment. You’ve worked hard
To earn it, swaying your arse and moaning sweetly;
Chipping in the odd word or two, which I echoed.
For P.O.
It’s salty and bitter, everything sticky
like Post-its of the subconscious, I was here,
my club is to score 4 x one more
Where do drops
of fear wander?
Perhaps today you
won’t come upon me.
Winter conspires
against our bodies.
Such sweet October. Leaves the shade of mud, rain, dried out spit.
As if today decay started a sequence – death’s lining.
It seems last night the river broke its banks, the wind tore up the rails.
01001001 01100001 01101101 01100011
01110000 01110101 01110100 01100101
01110011 01110000 01100101 01100001
I’m01100 looking00 10at10101 you100
01110011 01011001 01101111 01110101
01100I’m watching101101110 0111001
We carry ripe poppy heads. So many violets, bunched in hand.
Whispering hourglasses sift through us at the tail end of summer.
A trolley vanishes behind the mound. The battered road hammers downhill.
Dogs drag bones down back roads. Sniff the tibiae of tree roots.
At dawn
we emerge
from our cocoons
three hundred and sixty-five
times a year
not counting leap years
or periods of depression
In the evening Read the rest of this entry »
