Thursday, June 1, 2017

KINGA FABÓ

KINGA FABÓ


DO IT CAREFULLY


White hotel. Where sin is absent. And
so is guilty conscience.
You languish.

You're decadent.
Cheat on me Mondays.
Mondays

I like.


(Translated by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics)




EVERYTHING GROWS IN THE SUDDEN
EMPTINESS



I was getting down
to basics,
when the telephone


began to ring.
I didn't dare


touch it. Ominous
silence before the holiday.


(Translated by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics)





IT GOES TO THE GRAVE WITH THE BEARER OF THE SECRET,
   WHILE MOTIONS FREEZE IN THE DEPTHS OF HIS BODY


As if oozing from the edges of
fissures.
Couldn't get beyond the stains.


Sitting in a soft garden, in a semi-circle.
In the tiny crack between truth
and falsity.


(Translated by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics)




HE WAS WILTED AND DECADENT

He tries to come, in vain.
He jerks me off
as if I were a tired
personal object. I imagine
the rest.

I'd like to come on your face, he said.
Did he want to humiliate me?
What was he thinking?
After that, for two days
my eyes were inflamed.


(Translated by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics)




OR YES

To be a sad empty vase
to be a withered flowergirl in a vase
to be a tiny microphone
to be a crawl upon a shoulder
to be a touch of one’s secret
to be become scent his body
to be silent and to remain there
to be a cuddle on a palm
to be a microphone in a body
to be a secret
slow, final and joyous
to be white and foolish
to be and to flee
to be nothing and undetected

(Translated by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics)





AMONG DUSTY STAGE-PROPS

Once again I looked at myself
in the mirror.

Once again I was overcome by
self-pity.

Where are the hard manners I demand
from myself?

I take hold of my mirror
and leave.

(Translated by N. Ullrich Katalin)




LIKE IT USED TO BE

As the body is torn out of the soul.                
As the soul out of the body.
As it feels rejoicing, deep pleasure.

As two souls, two bodies meet.
As straight out of me into the other me.
Love is what long ago used to be.

(Translated by N. Ullrich Katalin)


KINGA FABÓ

KINGA FABÓ is a Hungarian poet. Her latest book, a bilingual Indonesian-English poetry collection Racun/Poison was published in 2015 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Fabó’s poetry has been published in various international literary journals and poetry magazines including Osiris, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Screech Owl, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear, Numéro Cinq, Deep Water Literary Journal, Fixpoetry, lyrikline.org and elsewhere as well as in anthologies like The Significant Anthology, Women in War, The Colours of Refuge, Poetry Against Racism, World Poetry Yearbook 2015, and others.Two of her poems have been translated into English by George Szirtes and are forthcoming in Modern Poetry in Translation Spring Issue with an introduction by Szirtes. Some of her individual poems have been translated into 17 languages altogether: Albanian, Arab, Bulgarian, English, Esperanto, French, Galego, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Tamil. One of her poems (The Ears) has among others six different Indonesian translations by six different authors.Earlier in her career Fabó was also a linguist dealing with theoretical issues,  and an essayist, too, interested in issues from the periphery, from the verge. She has also written an essay on Sylvia Plath. She has just become Poetry Editor at Diaphanous an American e-journal for literary and visual art that will be launched on 5. 15. 2017. She lives in Budapest, Hungary.


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