Translation

  • Another Death: ellipsis

    translation by Owen Good     It’s there. It’s gone. Both. Almost always.   I didn’t go out for four days; I was inside the entire time. I stocked up on wine. At the time, I never considered that I shouldn’t, that I should do something to combat this; I forget resolutions I’d previously made…

  • Notes on the Pekingese

    Translation by Christopher Peacock In some places, hapa is a generic term for dogs. But where I come from, the word hapa refers not to the wild, ferocious Tibetan mastiffs kept by nomads, but to a Pekingese: one of those squat, fluffy, snub-nosed, flat-faced, stout-legged little Chinese dogs that shuffles about the house and the…

  • Public Opinion

    Translated by John Vater   Sadiq Miyan managed to restrain himself at first, but then couldn’t hold himself back any longer. There it stood: a completely new bicycle, abandoned—without even a lock to guard it! Sadiq Miyan cast a quick glance around him, then ran his hand over the bike’s glittering handle, as if caressing…

  • Being Left Behind

    translated by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren Unpacking my suitcase, I realized, annoyed, that one of my green socks had been left behind at the beach. At the time, it must have fallen behind the pousada wardrobe, but by now, who knows if it hadn’t become a floor rag, a bag for screws, a flannel scrapto polish furniture?…

  • Memento

    translated by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren “Today we would have been married twenty-five years,” he said, looking at me through the rearview mirror. I didn’t react: I had jumped into a taxi on Nove de Julho Avenue. The traffic was terrible; we spent half an hour traveling to Faria Lima, and arrived at Pinheiros Street, all in…

  • The Story of the Stone

    translated by Salar Abdoh If on a January day you should get in your car and start driving on the steep Chalus road toward the sea, you will at last come upon a place near the dome formations where you’ll see a stone, a smallish slab of rock with the flat, written part facing you:…

  • Arrowhead Tubers

    Translated from the Chinese by Ting Wang Upon returning home, the first things my auntie saw were two big speckled roosters encircled by net bags. One squatting, the other standing, both appeared fairly sagacious. Once she spotted the roosters, Auntie knew my cousin was back. She looked carefully at the ground—maybe the roosters had good…

  • Banjo

    Translation by Maria Vassileva You could tell right away that I wasn’t a girl— even though the strings lie, as does the neck,awkwardly jutting out of the dress, here and therethe soft taut skin, almost calf, almost silk,or the gentle hairs right there onthe most profitable place in the whole damnplantation. To you I wasthe…

  • What Remains

    Translation by Maria Vassileva if we take spring and subtract early spring, the slush,the crocuses, the exalted and light infections of the nasopharynx,the lamb, all skin and bones—Rossetti and Blake are yet to comb the celestial wool,then Lent, budding green, then the greatdesert of April,from the first day to the last,then the rush of blood,…