Rafael Ayala Paez (Translated by Roger Hickin) and Daniel Y. Harris
Send us your poetry for POET OF THE WEEK consideration. Click here for submission guidelines.
Rafael Ayala Paez (Translated by Roger Hickin)
rafaelayalapaez88@gmail.com
Bio (author)
Rafael Ayala Páez (Zaraza, Guárico, Venezuela, April 24, 1988). Degree in Education, Language Arts mention the Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodríguez (UNESR). Founding member of the Municipal Writers Network of Zaraza. He has published in literary magazines in your country, of South America and Europe. Some of his poems have been translated to English, German, Frenchman and Hebrew. He has published:(Bocados de silencio, 2012). Visit Rafael on the web here: http://rafaelayalapaez.weebly.com/
Bio (translator)
Roger Hickin (b. 1951) is a New Zealand poet, visual artist, book designer & publisher. Although he has written poetry since the 1960s, his main preoccupation was with sculpture and painting until the early 2000s when poetry began to demand more serious attention. His artworks have often incorporated poetry and his involvement with the visual arts has given rise to a number of poems about art & artists. His Waiting for the Transport (Kilmog Press, Dunedin) and The Situation & other poems, (the initial Cold Hub Press chapbook), both appeared in 2009. Roger is the director of Cold Hub Press which publishes poetry in several languages, including bi-lingual chapbooks of poems by two Chilean poets: Juan Cameron (with translations by the celebrated US translator Cola Franzen) and Sergio Badilla Castillo (with translations by Roger Hickin and the author).
The following work is Copyright © 2013, and owned by Rafael Ayala Paez and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Impressions Memory is in the fingertips
Colors are in the eyes
Infancy is contained in the backbone
Worlds are born in broken shells
There will always be a sign in every object
made vague in the horizon
An infinite omen in the night
A sparkle suspended on the forehead
An old smell beneath the pebbles
A red sun behind the hills
Sunrises on the eyelids
Balloons floating in the sky
Villages unsuspected in the soles of feet
Giant anemones in the clouds
Beings that walk on their heads
Suns like pupils
Divers drowned in a glass of water
Shipwrecks of desperation
Locomotives exhaling a swarm of flies
Trees that understand what we say
A clock with arms and legs
A tower submerged in a puddle
Eyes crying birds
Dreams that drive their cars in the night
Rafts that navigate the arteries leaving a trail of stars
Songs searching for the light
Skies tense like elbows and arms
Cities built in my left hand
Suns between fingers
Tides of deaf ears
Pieces of beaches in the retina
Aquatic insects
Maps of remote places like galaxies
Discussions over matters that we will soon forget
Islands that are nests of sounds
Impressions of everything dreamed
seen
smelled
heard
sensed
felt
liked
forgotten… |
Daniel Y. Harris
daniel@danielyharris.com
Bio (auto)
Daniel Y. Harris is the author of Hyperlinks of Anxiety (Cervena Barva Press, 2013), The New Arcana (with John Amen, New York Quarterly Books, 2012), Paul Celan and the Messiah’s Broken Levered Tongue (with Adam Shechter, Cervena Barva Press, 2010; picked by The Jewish Forward as one of the 5 most important Jewish poetry books of 2010) and Unio Mystica (Cross-Cultural Communications, 2009). He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Some of his poetry, experimental writing, art, and essays have been published in BlazeVOX, Denver Quarterly, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, The New York Quarterly, In Posse Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Magazine.com and Poetry Salzburg Review. His website is www.danielyharris.com.
The following work is Copyright © 2013, and owned by Daniel Y. Harris and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Mr. & Mrs. Fumian The counter man admitted that it might have slipped his mind. — Rick Lupert
I Am My Own Orange County
Mrs. Fumian packs salad tongs, drags Mr. Fumian to a picnic.
He sips gooseberry wine, eats deviled eggs, choucroute garnie,
boysenberry tart and legumes sprinkled with figs. He asks her
to baste his pasty brain. He would rather be anywhere but on
a gridiron. “No reprieve for soured prigs pickled in the brine
of mango enchiladas,” she blurts and stares. A la carte or table
d’hôte with prix fixe? If not, then he escapes. He hurls himself
into a construction site finally getting revenge on the random
betrayal of the obscure and screams “sluiced without hands—
bloody metrical feet” to deafen the pop rage of his irreal mind.
He texts: “Unapprove. Unendorse. Unclap. Unsign. Undelete.
Unerase and unclip coherence.” He devolves as alien specie
with three sets of ears and a defective derrick—the gestured
clamp of his beret as a rivulet of rebar. His name is Fumian
with an “F” as in fluke for sophistry were phonetics his lingua
franca and Dr. Frank-N-Furter his alias. “We’re Tristan and
Isolde played by Ludwig and Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld,”
chimes in Mrs. Fumian.” “Weren’t you naked and licking dark
chocolate sauce at last glance?” ribs Mr. Fumian to three obese
men dipping triple cheeseburgers into vats of mayonnaise. Scorn,
rage, furious outbursts and potions beside a burning brazier dead
with Fumian on his lips. This is a Bluetooth opera curled on a
spare ear sounding hard turf with a si bémol. “Now everyone sing
Ornithorhynchus Anatinus here at the Cobalt Café,” waxes Mrs.
Fumian in June prior to the arrival of a lost tribe of Naqshbandi
acolytes speaking of Albrecht Dürer’s ship in Stultifera navis by
Sebastian Brant, published by J. Bergmann von Olpe in Basel
in 1498. Now that’s spin. Woodcut or styrofoam nose ring? Gas
blasting alert and a non sequitur to add to an otherwise less than
stellar performance. Were such a thing true, exegetes would blurt
out umbrage and madly eblast retorts to Emperor Maximilian,
Thomas Murner, Konrad Peutinger, Willibald Schott, Johannes
Reuchlin, Beatus Rhenanus, J. Wimpfeling and Ulrich Zasius,
whom all read at the Open Mic and drank Diet Cokes. Later,
chauffeured in gridlock by a mock Danton waxing The Reign
of Terror on the 101 out of LA, the Fumian’s play Charlotte
Corday and Jean-Paul Marat singing hip hop versions of The
Brady Bunch eating seasoned curly fries with Cheeze Wiz. |
