…c’est écrire
Latin translationem (nominative translatio) “a carrying beyond”
(l’au-delà… avec tout ce qu’il implique, ou pas)
Translation is carried out within the constraints of at least one other “alternity of being,” to use George Steiner’s term. Still, I would venture it is “impossibly possible.” Poetry, on the other hand, is often generated under similar constraints, but seems to retain the option of trying to do what it can’t, until it doesn’t, or until it does. Could poetry be considered “possibly impossible”?
So we’ve got translation leading (back) to writing, and writing leading (me, at least) to some of my poetry: stuffings, gnawings, splutterings
stuffings, gnawings, splutterings
A piece now food to mind, served hot and cold, fold in secret recipe, gleaming napery, swallowed between the bites…
My lettuce words a temp at justice. For food that’s fixed, yearning parsed. A leek into leg and hairdo, parsley under her breath. Madwoman to her maid, my murmur her clamor.
Sweet sweat of the chili’s plastic flesh got her bodice in this hustle. Threw the cookbook at me. Chuckled white no pluck and backslash. Bookcook.
Wishing bone brittle, she demurs. Glyphs below birdcage eyes, doing gore to done-to self. Slash and a simper. Dash of rock salt, black and blue.
So little wasted, her waist outrages the belt. Out-aged, that skinny mini-snake. Gone with hourglass’s souring, seasoned away with the years. Feels a full figure to feed, feeds a full figure to feel. Free. She salts sugar, à la queen. In 4-way stretch, fitting, forgiving. Future feast or famine is her layered parfait.
Waddle of electric knife, he carves it, she metes out. ’Scuse my fingers, ’scuse my reach. Turkey mumbling j’accuse.
Guy out sour, she lefts the daubing chin. Laughing on the menu, she disorders fists and wine.
Cartoon fingers hanker, characters caught in memory locked in lunchboxes left breakfasts ago—cuz we gotta eat too.
Waddle of electric knife, he carves it, she metes out. ’Scuse my fingers, ’scuse my reach. Turkey mumbling j’accuse.
Pops over the ruins, some almond, thin silver. Lady fingers unbind finger. Stubble of a macaroon, unshaven chin. Her win, his yearn. Swap treat. Learn to mold the marzipan, zip up the goblins. A rib for a rib, on stained butcher paper.
Dreaming the table adrift, of gauze, between chairs empty of bodies, gaze, gauze, or grace, to be the cream of a body swoon-fed soul, her mouth without his bite. Nuts go uncracked, unuttered, dribbles of soul unworded. Aside for another’s mouthful.
Off floor, eat doors, ah. From numb dish don’t dish to fish slippery, free form, me form. Tens of tentacles over two-arm mangle. Plate of pat, passed on, e-yum in e-yak. De-yums the candy shores where actually rooting is sanded away. Dives variegate and marry, who drinks deeper to the water. Wide birthing color, in my cheeks plenty. Know the new in a chew then gone.
Across Beyond 