The Golden Calf
At precisely 4:40 p.m., Basilius Lokhankin went on a hunger strike.He was lying on an oilcloth-covered couch, his back to the world, his face to the curved back of… More
It’s Time to Mow the Flowers
It’s Time to Mow the FlowersIt’s time to mow the flowers, don’t procrastinate. Fetch the sickles, come, don’t spare a single tulip in the fields. The meadows are in bloom: who has ever seen such… More
On Title and Talk
In translating Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities, Sophie Wilkins and I had great trouble finding equivalents for the infinitely subtle and nuanced gradations of title and talk in… More
Two-Tongued Tale
Some years ago, I began hearing voices, my own to be precise. It started with a scream. No, I’m not delusional. This is how it happened. Having had a… More
A Selection of Free-verse Poems
DuskBroken, bare, solitary, lost, an old treecrouches in the desert’s foreboding silence, its thousand-mile starefixed on the departure of a shade:and the moment the crow returns to its nest—worn-out, bearingsorrow to those… More
The Private Lives of Trees
Verónica was studying for an Art degree—she was in her second year—when Daniela arrived and threw everything off course.Anticipating the pain was her way of experiencing it—a young pain… More
“Abandoned House” and “Premonition”
Abandoned HouseThere, the steps are deep purpleThere the plants are red sunbirdsThere the stones have grown human facesI often pass byAssuming various anxious posturesFor I’ve always been feeble at… More
The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel)
Dedication To My Character EternaIn Eterna I have known the maximum impulse to piety without vice, nothing confused or demented in the act of abnegation and mercy. Nothing that… More
Splendid Conspiracy
Whenever he looked back on the episode, Imtaz couldn’t help reliving all the ghastliness of that moment when, clasping his co-star in a fiery embrace, he had realized his… More
The Remnants
“If someone hasn’t eaten any, his breath doesn’t smell.” This on the pattern of the proverb about onions, the idea being that doubt was in order. “If her mouth weren’t… More