Noitalsnart is here!

Announcing the publication of:

Noitalsnart, a handsome and handmade production featuring translations of Jorges Luis Borges, Anna Akhmatova, George Seferis, Paul Celan, and Con Ed street markings, along with poems, notes, poet-to-poet translations, reading responses, "english as a second third fourth or...more language" works, ammonia, and phonetic diagrams by Phyllis Wat, Nina Karacosta, Lydia Cortes, Andres Clerici, Tony Hoffman, Stephanie Gray, Susana Maio, and Marcella Durand. (Special appearance by John Wayne.)

To get your copy, come to the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church (2nd Ave. and 10th St.) on February 2nd at 9:30 pm, where participants in the Translate This! workshop will read.

Remember the Heads that Filled You

Remember the Heads that Filled You
(Akhmatova Joins Seferis)

I wake up with a marble head that loves three things
but I'm tired and don't know where to put this head
so I sing a song and drown out the peacocks
stick my elbows on his maps of America
fall into dream, like him. Fall out of dream, like me.
Marble head falls into the dream. Love/hate relations.
Tears well from the babies' eyes. Eyes open? Or closed?
His mouth loads up on rasberry jam. Speech gels.
Air equals hysteria. Cheeks jump out of skin.
My hands separate from their wrists, flap, flap.
This takes care of my good-byes. Leaves him.

--Phyllis Wat

American Cheek

He mapped three things inside the skin:
Severed evensong, old peacock eyes
bathed in raspberries, marble lives
joined by tears. She dreamed
the falling tea, a hysterical mouth,
the strength of women’s hands
and I, half-opened, approached me.

--Tony Hoffman