When a black hour takes the color of my blood on a red desk
When books don’t open to speak but to whisper
When I become as wicked as
When every door closes and gasps in the darkness
When an orange is not an orange, a shoe not a shoe, and my shirt is put on
in the morning by the one who will kill me in the evening
When I drink long gulps of water that fall into me like glass
When I am cut
When I don’t believe in now, lose the before and don’t see my reflection in shop windows
When someone starts to run after me, but just before he catches me I disappear again
When nothing whispers but everything is screaming because it is mute
When I am dicing an onion and think that the knife is the key with which I can open a wrist
so that sand rushes from it
When Michelangelo touches Adam and goes through the world of cracks
When I am the left and right segments, the one that searches and the one that doesn’t want
to find
When I withdraw a finger and won’t say that’s when anymore, no when, no bones, no one—
You
Aleš Šteger has published eight books of poetry, three novels, and two books of essays in Slovenian. His books in English include The Book of Things, Berlin, Essential Baggage, Above the Sky Beneath the Earth, and the novel Absolution. He lives in Ljubljana.
Brian Henry is the author of eleven books of poetry. He has translated books by Aleš Debeljak, Tomaž Šalamun, and Aleš Šteger. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.