Sitting Indian Style, Giving Birth
Carla Faesler and Sue Burke
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.
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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 perhaps sleeping |
so a whirlwind is released a wink |
(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 |
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 |
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 Financiero, El Huevo, Gatopardo, La Jornada, Periódico de Poesía, Reforma ,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