TRANSLATED FROM THE ROMANIAN BY THE AUTHOR

Nervous Tics

he was curious about how those like him wrote their verses
an emotional commotion an anomaly in behavior
something incomprehensible for those who see poetry as an
intellectual product
he shouted and gestured distorting the intimacy of things
communicating through a disjointed language
of intonation
hysterical
the lost language of who knows which imaginary tribe
with who knows which tribe which
took being
into the world
now

Zipfer Loners

the times rattle in my nerves like in a string
now all the tormented ones hide their weapons in a tent
when I lack strength I turn to inner effort
to push-ups in the night and the silent attack
it’s probably a consolation or maybe even a driving force

look a flame in the eyes with a whiter anger
than a lightning cracking across the vault
the rest of them die on armchairs with the money taken for revolt

more round than a cap the eclipse falls upon his eyes
he searches in wells and risks falling down
lower than his self where everything can be heard
where the orchestra is so is the box of monsters
where some barely enter while others never return
where to know you end up paying more than it costs
where cold tears flow over the barrel of a pistol
where there’s plenty of juice and flesh in the apple you bite into
where mother stands grey-haired with a package at the door
and I stare time in the eye like a bastard titan in the cage

where we all stand together
and whoever thinks they’re better
clearly doesn’t know

a constellation of loners hiding a hero’s mask
fall asleep untouched in a ghetto hospital
floating on mattresses over dormant volcanoes
the abyss blinks for a moment

Kaido Racers

snow falls over the domes over david’s valley
over warehouses toyota garages and parking lots frozen in time
here the wind whistles an aria of stripped car bodies
nostalgic notes
good times
the great acceleration

the highway abruptly cuts into forest roads
-you can hide among the trees and turn off the headlights-
leaning against the garage you can contemplate the yellow line
from which our careers hang to dry

potholes and stones painfully rummage through our exhaust system
but we don’t hurry here achilles is a clumsy cop
we are bosozoku turtles stirring up dust and mud on the windshield
the earth takes off running
waiting for us in the workshop
with hands dirty from oil
between pistons and makeshift stoves
the mechanic monks
the last moto-mohicans squeezed among the forest creatures
beasts next to beasts
gazing through the mesh of the net at the end of an era
at their own end accelerating
pushing the limits of desperation surpassing them
masters of your city at night
over the outskirts masters
teetering on the allowed limit of sound
freed from catalytic converters
teetering on the speed limit
rage rave and the right to internal combustion

adrenalia kurwa adrenalina
pieniadze mojna zajebac
mozna wyjebac przebac
mozna sie nimi podetrzec
ale sa rzeczy ktoruch kupic nie mozna
adrenalina
duma
pozucie sily
character

tire mounds with broken bellies
the other sky curves aerodynamically
rising from the metropolitan abyss
you’ll find us here drifting in tight curves
platforms uphill over Uruk
on the edge of the off-road with a new heart

rollin rollin’ rollin’
tetris with prosthetic pieces
palazzeschi awaits us in the garage ready to disassemble
second-hand configuration gains volume
second-hand configuration gains power

behold reader this poem is a showroom
of caressed wrecks like an animal on the dashboard
of old wrecks that acquire a new name
hydraulic obsessions passions

Man is an inventor of souls
with loyalty he destroys his
own at the first accident and
death
like a swarm of meteors in the nocturnal city sky
he will be gone forever
while burning

Chișinău Triquetra

an administrative grid where powers play tic-tac-toe
while we learn not to harm each other
anyway in Chișinău you can’t get lost I say
and I hear the laughter of explorers from the capital

in Chișinău you’re a snake on the mobile of an urban demiurge
guiding us in zigzags and squares
you navigate through crosses and cardinal points
not through coils and serpentine movements I say
and I hear the laughter of explorers

unless you catch the sinuous Albișoara
unless you stir the weeds of the outskirts
or dig deep into the belly of neighborhoods in search of the
telegram’s grail I say
and the explorers laugh satisfied and indulgent finally

Russo still haunts the meadows of Bâc. And how many others might
still be haunting the parks and the streets, the old apartments, the
Infrared installed in gaps and ruins?

Infrared threatened with demolition.

I’m sorry I don’t read a friend tells me as we turn towards Ștefan
behind the Hașdeu Library
I’m sorry but even more I regret the historic buildings destroyed
equal to a library in full blaze

we love you Chișinău but we are tired of your dark corners
the plasma in which we bathe
the amniotic fluid we cannot break free from
because you Chișinău feed us without satiating us
because you Chișinău feed our hunger and make it grow
with it you push us into the world to starve others
and you don’t give us an ounce of satisfaction
except for a fragile and underground one
that requires a continuous refusal an eternal strike
you Chișinău turn us into street divers
one day I will scatter my limbs Chișinău
and I will bury them in your sectors teeming

with enthusiastic dilettantes petty businessmen cunning autodidacts
sacred madmen monsters wanderers tricksters photographers exiles
troubadours poets old foxes rockers rappers techno-weirdos mystics
cynics with four aces fork-etiquette taxi drivers that you have to know
how to handle

sullen and sour people that you’ll never know how to handle
widows with living husbands old gopniks
the barely perceptible rustling outside
of messages passed through strings from cell to cell
of bluish-vanished ink impregnated in mermaid tails and anchors
on arms
of hot lines of failed paths thin and punctured hands reeking and
baldness

of the contrasts that strike you to disorientation Chișinău
your god is coincident in contradictions

to you I return when I’m tired of nihilists and atheists
into you I’ll dive like into the waters of Innsmouth
yours are the marvelous and unheard-of splendors
yours is the marine and sarmatian abyss
you are the Citadel of Trees
in you are my dead ones
the ones from the depths
the ancestors
when the tension of terror weakens
drawn towards unknown depths
instead of being afraid of them
freed from asylums and penitentiaries
we will dwell forever
in the shade of your augustine plane trees

Also, read The Last Sun and Other Poems by Anamika Anu, translated from the Hindi by Dipanwita Bhattacharyya and published in The Antonym:

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