Someone
holds you.
Your beloved.
You see
how dust is weightless
in the sunlight—
seeking a path through two bodies.
Is that it?
(Or maybe
in the guillotine of the sun
something else occurs.)
Now we fall silent and rest
in the mercy
of light and time
before History
begins its slow fable.
Irene Ivantcheva, is a literary critic, historian, and feminist scholar. She is the author of Shores of Emotions: Voices of Women in Bulgarian Poetry and Ecrire dans la langue de l’Autre: Assia Djebaret Julia Kristeva,as well as numerous articles, essays, poems, and a literature textbook. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, she currently lives in the United States and teaches French language and literature at the University of Cincinnati.
Holly Karapetkova’s poetry, prose, and translations from the Bulgarian have appeared recently in Prairie Schooner, Nashville Review, The Southern Review, and many other places. Her second book, Towline, won the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize and was recently published by Cloudbank Books.