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.