Sitting Indian Style, Giving Birth

Carla Faesler and Sue Burke

About the Curators

from One-Handed, curated by Jennifer Adcock and Rahul Bery

One-Handed is an anthology of experimental poetry translation by Scottish and Mexican poets (and their translators into English). The focus is very much on the process of translation, whereby each pair of poets produce their own versions of the same text. Poets were encouraged to be very free, and the results are as divergent as they are exciting. Edited by Jennifer Adcock and Rahul Bery.

--

What really starts me off is that
the sun makes me kneel probing like a dentist
digging out roots
I am split
on his hooks
humbled
She rolls across the apartment floor
kneels before her husband and hugs him
his knees press on her belly
rejection roars like a hurricane
headstand in a lotus flower
her thighs watch the moon close
its only eyelid
neighbors ask about the anesthesia
antiseptic containers of progress
flattened

they
drive
into
a tempest
the sharpest mind
closed

perhaps sleeping

so

a whirlwind is released
by

a wink
numbed!

(I recall Diego's blue-green figures in The Arrival of Cortés his formless swollen knees) remembering key people
informed

They put the child in the "eye of the storm" and he spoke
from the first day
with his eyes innocently pointing

the center of

attention

torment
from
The snow outside fell faster, a shroud
we watched it together
outside
we were looking in
all around
together

My boy my dearest
I told him I wanted to weep when I saw you
And he knew which part of me meant nothing

and knew I saw you
part of me


Carla Faesler is a poet and writer. She won the Gilberto Owen National Literature Award in 2002 for her book Anábasis Maqueta and writes regularly for newspapers and cultural magazines, including Casa del Tiempo,Complot, El FinancieroEl Huevo, GatopardoLa JornadaPeriódico de PoesíaReforma ,and Revista Universidad de México. She was born in Mexico City.

Sue Burke was born in Milwaukee, Wis., and moved to Madrid, Spain, in 2000, where she works as a writer and translator. Her work ranges from journalism to fiction and poetry, and she has most recently been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, tinywords, Seven By Twenty, World Haiku Review, and Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Flush Fiction. More about her is at http://www.sue.burke.name