My mother gave birth in December. Snow fell on the river. Water froze over the fish by month’s end.  She showed me to everyone since I hadn’t died . . . .  “We’ll take her out in pieces, an arm and a leg caught, maybe unformed.”           Only a sign like a silent hiss remains from that time: a return to that womb with my child, head down, body still forming, two loops of flesh around her neck. Step...

I neared a branch heavy with snow bending under the grip of one of the crows. I became that gray and black rocking. And an uncommon green (a mix of salvia and ice) that spread a tint of bruise on the clouds. I saw myself in that purgatory. Everything was landscape.  Anger: a cloud. Uncertainty—heaps: a hill. Estrangement: trees with shivering shadows. “Pay attention,” said shade from the bush closest to me, “fog swallows your pain. Learn in this earthly life...

I cut my sister’s hair today the locks fell like huge tears against the baseboards I swept it up and tossed it in the trash All that dead hair has filled my dreams One day I dreamt of dead hair  The strands all joined back together They ganged up and demanded I account for my sad deed I was silent, dumbstruck The dead hair insisted: Are you there? Why did you butcher me? I gathered up the hair and my sister’s face appeared floating in the distance Why did you throw my hair...

Frail before the squalor             squalor being a feeble answer the everyday self gives its own abjections it surprises me to be in a city whose name like the humidity that clings to its ancient walls or like its tubercular pigeons means nothing to me any more than being inside its plastic image as I sink into La Defense or lose myself in the ardor of its past      oh the purity the freshness of withered things...

how to write you when the letters are reluctant to sound out voices i knew voices i memorized rush back into loneliness only stillness now even that soon moves away far to the edge of desolation suspicious of any poetry even to exchange a hello moreover words when spelled out can turn into a row of pain instantly in every space how to write you when the pages close themselves the paper lays the body face down covering it with a sheet that quivers from throbbing pens and cursors scattered...

1 When the ever so polite earthquake Rocked our village I heard the singing and dancing In the village square Suddenly fall silent. Insects and other animals The grass, plants, and trees And even the words that were being spoken Sentences filled with anger that billowed like smoke Suddenly fell mute. All was still 2 Our small and stuffy room with its cracked wall A lantern flickering from lack of oil The bed with its creaky springs and withered pillows Where all was fatigue and...

1 After half a life: selva oscura. The dog that I was. Jesus-mittens nailed onto treetips—the Lord had large hands. Blooms made of ejaculate. I walked on. Deeper into the woods.   2 King of the beasts: a bird walking with a broken nose; wings, a comet tail, never worn. Pride after the fall. Carnal desire: a puffy octopus from the class of unsuitable cephalopods, floating in the sky in place of a moon. Staring at the transwoman I cannot be. Call me Beatrice, she says. I...

“muxmäuschen” © Simone Kornappel. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2015 by Jake Schneider. All rights reserved.

My friends are distressed Stunned into silence Many of them grieve And all have despaired Suddenly the night has attacked us It’s so dark I can’t see my path Darkness spreads over everything Like grief after a death            People look for light They search for candles, lanterns To cast light on this tragedy Instead of lighting their houses My friends grieve And my brothers Stunned into silence Everyone despairs       ...

History will remember this man Our grandchildren will study him between school recesses Old women will speak of him as a strange enigma A myth, an eccentric aberration . . . The old men will brush off their shoulders Their lesson finished, the children will rush to the courtyard to play ubete, the wolf And mothers let out a weak sigh At hearing their children cry: Peter ninde? Ni wewe, ni wewe Who’s Pierre? It’s you, it’s you. There will be no more wolf on the vast...

What’s real isn’t this thing or that thing my presents that you gave away once they lost the weight and sheen of being given and became no more than fragile objects. What’s real isn’t our clumsy lies or the bodies of others we barely dare to touch. Nor is it doubt—it can’t be doubt— nor can it be hatred, fear, fatigue. My bet is that what’s real is infinitely beautiful. There is a false time set in motion when we fall, but true time is the...

Fragments from the Guidebook of the Dead                         First daytrip/ Kolafjöll No lemonwood grows here, but those interested should note a pale moonwort inching its way from under the lava rock On the Sunny Side There are planets that have two suns and black plants— even though there are two suns and the plants are the color of night there are...

The tallest mountain on Mars is 24 kilometers high and I have climbed it in my dreams. I remember the view from the peak: magnificent; the blue planet swam in the half-twilight of evening. I seem to remember Louis Armstrong was with me, no, Lance Armstrong, no it was Neil Armstrong, I mean. When I awoke I was still in hiking boots caked with red clay, which I scraped off the soles and rolled into a tiny moon.

Did you never get my letter, Mister Brown? it was aurora pink and glittery and I poured perfume from the tester all over it Mister Brown, “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love me,” do I look like a terrorist? I am not the (hu)man with the wine I’m a completely different (hu)man when I’m drunk I am more (hu)man a stronger and bigger (hu)man when I’m drunk greed, ambition, the crazy jealousy are not characteristics characteristic...

Friday. A summer day. The sun shines. Everyone takes off socks and sweaters and jeans. Beautiful girls spread out blankets on the grass. Beautiful girls have a good day, a summer day. When evening falls, they go out and dance until morning and go home with a boy or a girl and wake hungover but happy for the new day, the summer day. The dizzying scent of freshly cut grass. A wriggling blossom in a flower bed. Dolphins leap in the bay. The sun shines. Nothing is missing. Babies smile...

In memory of Jónas Þorbjarnarson (1960-2012)   1. The dark kaiser’s ship, deep-keeled, cuts the water from head to head, breaks and sinks.        * The one who is here to tell us what it means to drown also knows the miracle of lungs filling anew with air when the body shoots up to the surface, treading water, gasping for breath. 2. It seeps into the brain, the black sea:...

The funeral meal—all of the relatives and neighbors have come. I don’t know any of them. The death of my parents in the village, it played out long ago in the future. I cannot summon the memory. I cannot cry. After a long and difficult illness, the death of their eight-hour workday                                                        ...

Bus I Wednesday arrives and my only thought is that I’m looking forward to taking the bus at noon. I didn’t know there would be days like this—days when the only thing I look forward to is the bus, and the only positive thing I think about myself is that I have clean hair. A new month arrives and I realize that the last month passed in the wish that it would simply pass. One summer I took the bus to work every morning. One day, I realized that the bus route had changed;...

One day I’ll tear off my lips and eat them like candy. One day I’ll rip out my chest because I’m not an orphanage for gathering angels. One day I’ll remove the door and stand in its stead to stop myself from leaving for the hole in the world.

Though I’m right beside it, I can’t call out to the sea: neighbor, come join me for coffee. Instead, my other neighbor Carmel visits me through the window without my permission and never even once  tries to enter through the door (anyway, it owns the place). Sometimes church bells reach me from the depths of Wadi Nisnas, other times the morning call to prayer comes quietly from the Istiqlal Mosque (that the old breeze carries from Wadi Salib), the Baha’is keep...