edited by Bailey Cohen-Vera
TRANSFIGURATIONS
Yaz Lancaster
AFFIRMATION 1
Omega Point
David Maduli
[Visage]
[ondes Martenot]
[Dissonance]
Madeleine Corley
Strunk and White Collage 4 - !
Strunk and White Collage 1- Emphasis
Carl Lewandowski
You better pray we don't spill our guts
Sandra Crouch
Alpejagerslied
after Paul Van Ostaijen
and Gertrude Stein
And here are the streets asphalt,
and here are the streets open.
Two men are walking in air.
That is the one here stopped
in the other here opened.
The train raced the name once, Hinder in Winder.
The train raced the name once, Hinder in Winder,
once the baroque hood-makers.
Travel was difficult.
The one here never was hog hood in the mirror.
The other here never was hog hood in the lens.
Done gone the one in the other here.
The mirrors in the lens, the air in the door.
The mirrors are stopped.
The lenses are opened.
Done gone both men.
Else met was hog hood, was egged hog hood, was
bloodegged hog hood.
Elsewhere racing.
The train raced the day.
Once the name.
Once Hinder in Winder.
Once the baroque hood-maker.
Done sitting both men.
The mirror in the lens, the air in the door.
Evermore elsewhere racing.
One hog hooded where eyed his hoof.
When versed ever well.
Else sat was egged. Hood eyed his egged hoof.
That is one mirror.
That is his mirror once daily both men.
mistranslation by Sandra Crouch
Alpejagerslied
original text by Paul Van Ostaijen
Voor E. du Perron
Een heer die de straat afdaalt
een heer die de straat opklimt
twee heren die dalen en klimmen
dat is de ene heer daalt
en de andere heer klimt
vlak vóór de winkel van Hinderickx en Winderickx
vlak vóór de winkel van Hinderickx en Winderickx van de beroemde hoedemakers
treffen zij elkaar
de ene heer neemt zijn hoge hoed in de rechterhand
de andere heer neemt zijn hoge hoed in de linkerhand
dan gaan de ene en de andere heer
de rechtse en de linkse de klimmende en de dalende
de rechtse die daalt
de linkse die klimt
dan gaan beide heren
elk met zijn hoge hoed zijn eigen hoge hoed zijn bloedeigen hoge hoed
elkaar voorbij
vlak vóór de deur
van de winkel
van Hinderickx en Winderickx
van de beroemde hoedemakers
dan zetten beide heren
de rechtse en de linkse de klimmende en de dalende
eenmaal aan elkaar voorbij
hun hoge hoeden weer op het hoofd
men versta mij wel
elk zet zijn eigen hoed op het eigen hoofd
dat is hun recht
dat is het recht van deze beide heren
Hemisphere in Your Hair
after Charles Baudelaire
translated from the French
to the Czech by Jaroslav Fort
You called as if it were long
and long were doubtable.
Your hair, if it were in me,
like living strands promenading
water under terrible whole faces.
And like one’s coat
were hands, rose-tipped.
If it were rose-tipped
the air would remember.
If you had only seen what I
in your hair could see: everythings.
Whatever I read. What
everythings I heard. Air
pausing before sound.
This air preknown.
This air before music.
In your hair sleeps the full shower
and the splashing.
Monsoons christmas above
stormy seas before I,
more myself, do witchwalk.
Where space is bluer, thicker.
Where air calls fruit, lays down,
And people pray.
In the ocean your barbers propagate,
dock knowingly on housing songs.
Hemispheres melodify
where families and boats
don every possible visage.
They go to document the mornings,
or smoothly erase the pictures
you are building.
In love your barbers
walk on repeating fabric,
soap the long hours,
grass on sofas in coyote-beautiful boats.
When objects knock dear flowers
and cold-strange ornaments
was I collecting unknowingly:
God-hunting through woolen docklands.
In palpable fireplaces your barbers
sound of tobacco mixed with opium and sugar.
In the nights your barbers help themselves
to my unfinished blue fishes.
In the sea breathe your barbers,
soft like dust feathers repeating
themselves, gathering children.
Drinking coconut oil.
Call me doubtable. Call me long.
Play your hard black throat songs
and when your hair grows itself,
undergiving, barber-spurning,
it will be I answering.
As if I had swallowed this memory.
Hemisphere in Your Hair p2
mistranslation from the Czech to the English by Sandra Crouch
Un hémisphère dans une chevelure
Laisse-moi respirer longtemps, longtemps, l’odeur de tes cheveux, y plonger tout mon visage, comme un homme altéré dans l’eau d’une source, et les agiter avec ma main comme un mouchoir odorant, pour secouer de souvenirs dans l’air.
Si tu pouvais savoir tout ce que je vois! tout ce que je sens! tout ce que j’entends dans tes cheveux ! Mon âme voyage sur le parfum comme l’âme des autres hommes sur la musique.
Tes cheveux contiennent tout un rêve, plein de voilures et de mâtures; ils contiennent de grandes mers dont les moussons me portent vers de charmants climats, où l’espace est plus bleu et plus profond, où l’atmosphère es parfumée par les fruits, par les feuilles et par la peau humaine.
Dans l’océan de ta chevelure, j’entrevois un port fourmillant de chants mélancoliques, d’hommes vigoureux de toutes nations et de navires de toutes formes découpant leurs architectures fines et compliquées sur un ciel immense où se prélasse l’éternelle chaleur.
Dans les caresses de ta chevelure, je retrouve les langueurs des longues heures passées sur un divan, dans la chambre d’un beau navire, bercées par le roulis imperceptible du port, entre les pots de fleurs et les gargoulettes rafraîchissantes.
Dans l’ardent foyer de ta chevelure, je respire l’odeur du tabac mêlé à l’opium et au sucre; dans la nuit de ta chevelure, je vois resplendir l’infini de l’azur tropical; sur les rivages duvetés de ta chevelure je m’enivre de odeurs combinées du goudron, du musc et de l’huile de coco.
Laisse-moi mordre longtemps tes tresses lourdes et noires. Quand je mordille tes cheveux élastiques et rebelles, il me semble que je mange des souvenirs.
Charles Baudelaire 1862 – Le Spleen de Paris
Mathilda Cullen
excerpt from
all i’d drool as thanks
all i’d drool as thanks. i lie a clueless patronym, date a man, lip is a cruise. arm up ass is strummed through grass. all a doozy, and at dusk o these eyes a pit in sight. a garment tomb naked o my dick what a mood. name me. ask and i may sing upon those thighs. carry on. genital damp i made a mess. ignite in death. i lie in prose, turn me around, tie me to any old rung. no eyes lap up aural lipstick loss. fill my name fate: this enough, percolate a sea. to tell omen as sigh of day. nudes to names. if america’s a tossed ocean prose the road take a loose eye & tie. days can blow away. omen eratta. prose open. my knife in poetry. he was caressed & morphed. done. i meant it: air gone, i a piss sew. keep it cool. i cry on top. you’ll a boy say, take a rope and go. take me and i’ll crack open. stain a kiss again. am a mess, take again. arm in a knot, tied tight. pollinate. pull on my cock i’ll lament a little. death in a photo, zoom in. i can’t take it on alone. prole lip, a naked lake on the law. grinning i, to bask in a dress, panting, kneeling, eyes alight. am anchored in a state, it empties us. caress out the broken sappho. all i came in glossed to letters. the language pities us. a pace in errata. tone to tone, o this map of days deepen politically. call us human, tuned. am a tomb of diamond, frenulum teasing, lick it. i feel anchored, am a rare prose. caress all day, they let us in the ass to take a fist. angle is changed. all ass is ass, perforate catastrophe. poet kills all her matter. eyes are closed. gun i can’t aim. a parting i can’t, i posed in dress, probably 6 or 7 verses are missing i can’t lie.column 1 has been erased. a new mortem is death. orchi a promise, say nay, tension kept all in. pedestrian dandies. i’ll let a mess, ass too wet a mess. cusp of leaking. poet is smitten. my persimmon effeminate cock, a writ omen. call us a sound, a damp elegy (call us). a name, soon a seithr, is it out there, poet. peer us, all a famous cum in aïda. a mess made muse. catch a feeling, linger. an opened poet. erase a day. o the moss. faked a coup. tell us a name, a nip is seen. a lake lays against you. take this to daphne. i’m too porous, the poets say, i’ll eclipse you, my lines a forest out there. my lips a map of dyke names. macaron hello. hello. a lake in the taiga. all a kiss i do. am eclipsed face, cut my daisy fate. go on, cut his cock off. let a mess, i’ll lick it right up. i’m a lamb, dame son of men. a day lingers on. tame me, tell me to leak. entire names i took. earfuck. a pussy rife with you, amor. blaring lobotomized opal lake: o naked sonata. it’s not a name, ass gape, rose tame no more. these days approach a new terror. my zephyr of new music, denouement of raw tone. dick in phantasm prose. out of names, fate. tap a knave, a man on the knee. for no name i have. o my, i’m a stain, a peppered dame, a sappho in a man’s eye: all i’m saying is that alone i sigh. burnt eros. none echo so poem. face dappled your palm. no antidote. total noun austerity. men look at this easy mouth and part it. to fill a loose tone a day never is. verses 1-12 cannot be read. you cannot be read. call it a perishing (terror in a leaf of prose). catch us ajar, meaning a toss up. they’re coming in dead prose, deaf noise. my tranny art is clipped. you lie down, lips open, anchored. why don’t you whip a kiss in prose, tame aphroditos. aeromax trade, cannons on the periphery. couldn’t tame the masses. empty form, sugar door. teeming terror dactyl, lingering. do not make a canto out of this. first lines of ten different poems: entirely empty, no probate. you put a name phantom on me, crown the date. eye culprit, they meant it, sanguine pulpit, music opened up in my friends, periphrasis tight, o let’s buy all of the peace. air was empty, apart from balloons, i’m a noun arrested. tectonic androgynous. i’m a noun, it’s an argument. i’m a noun, and those men’ll pull a mess out. i’m a noun, a big maybe. the new surrounds us. i douse it with my lick. eros deep in me. i carried names far away. pull a chorus of names from a tomb. sew a new protest form. it’s her “i’m a noun” bit, to need a name i’d die glued to me. legs form a sad language. stole the sun. again, appellation. o us. this is a call in the open, autoerotic. it’s my call, at peace cruising in sin. cling against another day. eros’ll let go, get lost in my raw forest. i don’t always kiss the little empty, don’t always climb inside. sappho, i’d take us along the morning, all our legs in pairs, our dicks a stained canto. the old music oughta die. i could write catastrophe, could you rhyme it. ache and reek and spill and kiss then die. our prose is mangled, ekphrastic. am a preposition. men croak in sin, i don’t. no prayers can erase it. a doom awaits us, will let our terror cruise across. maps of lakes glossed over. take me softly. there, upon eros, soon an echo may take me. war came easy, a day at a time, doled out. kiss the noon. all i’m saying is i’m adorable. am a raw baritone, bar moss, bar moss. boy gets lost, paid the fee, lighter ran out. victorious sappho. the whole day is a baton. i oughta know, my lips open in melancholy media. mayday. no one in the femme. muses map the locale. night opens the light, ready to sell the noise.
Victoria Mbabazi
AS[S] IS
Ass found poem
a creature big as a two planets it’s nasty
it made Becky gay got Jayz seeing angel
numbers and rockets and waterfalls
it got thirty two flavours raspberry
grape cherry I don’t think you’re ready for it
ass is colossal flip it and reverse it eat it
like groceries say it taste like a grapefruit
and move like jelly come on bring out
the romaine toss the salad say you love mee
eeeeeee and my booty I’ll shake it
like a pom pom in my apple bottom
jeans surgical booty he wanna know how
I got that ass like that I said new body
who this he love to watch me leave
watch it go bubble bubble wobble d
wobble wop come on check on it dip it
pop it I’ll back that ass up I got a big
ole butt call me bottom enby I’ll make it
boomerang ass got you sprung got Sisquo
doing four part harmonies about floss watch me
bend it over and dance dance dance dance
about the contributors
edited by Bailey Cohen-Vera
Bailey Cohen-Vera is a poet and jiujiteiro living in Brooklyn, NY.
Yaz Lancaster - “AFFIRMATION 1” & “Omega Point”
Yaz Lancaster (they/them) is a Black transdisciplinary artist and Aquarius stellium most interested in relational aesthetics & the everyday; fragments & collage; and liberatory politics. Their work has appeared in Afternoon Visitor, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, The Poetry Project Newsletter, the tiny, and Underblong (where their poems “Ratios” and “Put simply, it’s this way” received the 2021 Blongprize). Yaz holds degrees in violin & poetry from NYU. They are an editor at Peach Mag, organizer with Sound Off: Music for Bail, and co-manager of DIY record label people | places | records.
David Maduli - “[Visage]”, “[ondes Martenot]”, & “[Dissonance]”
David S. Maduli is a father, husband, writer and educator. His work, often inflected by many years as a DJ and public school teacher, has received the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Born in San Francisco, he is a longtime resident of East Oakland, Lisjan Ohlone land, where he completed his MFA at Mills College with a fellowship in Community Poetics. In addition to his work in public schools, he is an instructor in the MFA in Writing program at Lindenwood University.
Madeleine Corley - “Strunk and White Collage 4 - !” & “Strunk and White Collage 1- Emphasis”
Madeleine Corley (she/her) is a writer by internal monologue and 1/4th of The Newsledder. Her work has been featured in HAD, Folio, Olney, Moist, among others. Check her out at madelinksi.com or on Twitter @madelinksi. One day she’d like to own a Mystery Machine.
Carl Lewandowski - “You better pray we don't spill our guts”
Carl Lewandowski lives and works in New York City. You can find his previous publications in Animus Classics Journal, Third Estate Art’s Quaranzine, and elsewhere. You can find his music at muddyvesture.bandcamp.com.
Sandra Crouch - “Alpejagerslied” & “Hemisphere in Your Hair”
Sandra Crouch, MA, is a poet and multi-genre artist. Her work has been published in HAD, Jet Fuel Review, MER Literary, Rogue Agent, Rust+Moth, SWWIM, West Trestle Review and elsewhere. Sandra is a recent transplant to Nashville, Tennessee. You can read more at https://www.sandracrouch.
Mathilda Cullen - exceprt from “all i’d drool as thanks”
Mathilda Cullen is a poet and translator. Her published works include Stanzas for Four Hands: An Ophanim (with Dominick Knowles); Illyric Elegies, a Belladonna* chaplet; all i’d drool as thanks, a homophonic translation of Sappho’s fragments in prose (forthcoming from Bottlecap Press), and Vormorgen: The Collected Works of Ernst Toller. Her poetics revolves around dissociatia, associations, and frenetics, while her translations typically focus on queer writers from East Germany.
Victoria Mbabazi - “AS[S] IS”
Victoria Mbabazi’s work can be found in several literary magazines including Rejection Letters, Minola Review and No Contact Mag. Their chapbook “chapbook” is available with Anstruther Press and their double chapbook “FLIP” is available with Knife Fork Books. They’re currently living in Brooklyn, New York.