The death of the poet meant she had to make her son from glass. The capsules of alprazolam were meant for the delicate organs, the needles of rain to etch the mouth, and the currents to widen the crevice for the black hole of speech. The insects’ cries atop the green verses are intended to stand for his alphabet. The bright petals of a cactus blossom lain in the brain cavity issue sublime thoughts. Look at his face: the lashes embroidered in black thread, the eyes closed over grey stones as though in sleep, dreaming the poet into being. She was forced to sell her precious moons to light the spectacle of bears and riders arranged in pink frills. Because she consistently has ignored the law on bodies, her son must perform in the ring as well. Her will, once soft and black as a pelt in winter, expands to fill the shadows. There is a record of her own infancy in roses, her halo composed of thorns and rapeseed. Precious but inaccessible. Someone wrote her into being—open the mouth and wine pours out, her breast a meat according to men. In another ring, combatants oil their hair. Our Lady is not the only one to fight for her bodies.
Georg Amsel comes from Salzburg and conceives poetic ideas in an Austrian German from the late 1800s. His poems appear recently in Lotus-eater Magazine, Cagibi, Portland Review, and Passages North, among others, and his work “Komfort” translated by Lake Angela as “Comfort” is listed in The Best Literary Translations of 2024 edited by Jane Hirshfield. His poetry seeks to disrupt the contemporary uses of language as much as its translations do.
Lake Angela holds a PhD in the intersemiotic translation of poetry and dance from the University of Texas at Dallas and has her MFA in poetry. Her books include Organblooms and Words for the Dead (FutureCycle Press), and Scivias Choreomaniae is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil. Recent publications appear in fillingStation, New York Quarterly, Seneca Review, and The Bitter Oleander, among others. Her work advocates for neurodivergence and schizophrenia spectrum creativity, and she welcomes visitors to www.lakeangeladance.com.