Pagans

Progenitor [print only]

…

It was the unwanted answer

the wrong voice

official
male
foreign

and a story that should never be heard.

…

The Hawk

The Thought Erotic

…

“This is M-Sec, not the Core. There should be people around.”

Freema’s instincts feel true. If this is the marginal sector, the sector of the unemployed, the workers without contracts, there should be people around. It shouldn’t be empty. The streets shouldn’t be abandoned. The buildings are old and in disrepair, rusty bars on the windows, paint mostly gone, walls patched up here and there—but they feel only recently deserted. There is a precariousness in this emptiness. If this were the wild, I would be listening to the birds. To see what they tell me. To wait for their alarm. But the city has no birds.

…

Into the Linguistic Rabbit Hole

Lunch Ticket

…

For native speakers of languages with grammatical gender, there are studies that show their perception of inanimate objects is affected by the gender of those objects. …

I wonder, could the opposite be true? Could sitting in a chair in a different country affect my own gender by acquiring the gender of the chair itself? In Greek, καρέκλα is feminine. In Russian, стул is masculine. In Romanian, scaun is neuter. In English, chairs don’t have gender. Could I be she in Greece, he in Russia, it/they in Romania, and genderless in England? Wouldn’t that be the gender-fluid dream?

…

The dreams in which I’m (not) dying

Lunch Ticket

…

I’ve had pleasant dreams, anxious dreams, bizarre dreams, scary dreams, wet dreams, but I rarely remember any of them. This specific nightmare, however, kept coming back till my late 30s, maybe even 40s, and I still remember it vividly. Nightmares about the Panhellenics are common among Greeks for years and decades after high school, and one thing that still binds me to a common Greek experience. I never really wondered why I had this particular nightmare as the Panhellenics are an extremely stressful time for most who take them, sometimes resulting in students taken to the hospital for panic attacks. There have even been suicides (link in Greek). I do wonder though why we have nightmares at all. What is the purpose of disturbing our sleep with horrifying scenarios, real or imagined?

…

Μεταφράζοντας το εαυτό, μεταφράζοντας το queer

Κουίρ 2024: Βίωμα, τέχνη, θεωρία [Translating self, translating queer in Queer 2024: Lived experience, art, theory] [print only]

…

Γεννήθηκα ανάμεσα σε δύο γλώσσες, καμία από τις οποίες δεν είχε όνομα για μένα. Μου επέβαλαν ονόματα βέβαια (αγόρι, άνδρας, Παύλος, boy, man, Paul) αλλά δεν ήταν δικά μου. Χρόνια κουβάλαγα το βάρος τους με μια ατελείωτη/ άσβεστη εξάντληση που τη δεχόμουν ως φυσική, ως αναπόφευκτη, τι να κάνουμε, έτσι είναι. Πολλές φορές σχεδόν πνίγηκα στα κύματα του ενδιάμεσου, ψάχνοντας για ένα εαυτό που πίστευα ότι δεν υπάρχει. Ακόμα και σήμερα, υπάρχουν στιγμές που νιώθω σαν να σχίζομαι στα συρματοπλέγματα μιας αποστρατιωτικοποιημένης ζώνης στα σύνορα του κράτους που μου είπαν ότι έπρεπε να είμαι και του τόπου όπου γίνομαι κάτι που δεν θα ’πρεπε.

…

The Queer Beauty of Unfaithful Translations

World Literature Today

…

It’s true that when a translation focuses on being fluent and beautiful in the target language it might often obscure the “foreignness” of the original text and thus reinforce cultural imperialism. This faux universality presents the values of empire as fundamentally human values. But what if fluency can be an instrument of subversion, not an exercise in hegemony, if language is a comrade to liberation, not a companion to empire? Can linguistic and literary fluency be promiscuous instead of obedient? What if I chose to be faithful not to the words of her text but to its truth, to how this is not just her story, to the musicality and lightness of her book? What if by writing a beautiful translation I honor the subversive and violent beauty of her language? The ones who demand fidelity in translation also demand that our bodies remain faithful to their binary constructs. The ones who demand beauty in translation also expect us to conform our bodies to their beauty standards. They demand fidelity and conformity to a system and standards of erasure.

…

“The Chickens” by Ursula Foskolou

Asymptote

I put the key in the door and I saw them: they were all standing upright and mute by the side of the bed. The relatives, a long coiled queue, were offering their hands and with straight rigid backs they were bowing like chickens. Centered on a hard pillow, my grandmother’s head was cold and in places translucent, like ice that had started to melt. I cleared a path violently and found myself there. The bed smelled from up close: violets, roses, and that earthy smell of old water that you have forgotten in the fridge for months. I lowered myself next to her ear and—speaking—I started to warm her with my breath. Small initially and then wider, the hole was dripping incessantly, soaking the pillow. By midday, she was gone. My grandmother, all of her, flowed into a small basin, and the chickens at her side made a queue to quench their thirst.

“Outside” and “Upside down” by Ursula Foskolou

Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation (archived on the Wayback Machine.)

Outside

The cold pierces my bones. I stay outside the whole night and watch all of you: the noisy, excitable mass, moving gracelessly to the rhythm of the music. You are buried somewhere in there, among them. And there are times when I cannot make out your face. Someone stands in front of you, sips his drink, hugs you and sweetly wishes you “happy birthday.” You put your arms around his neck, kiss him and continue to dance. I want to burst in with rage, to clear a way through the crowd, to shove everyone violently aside and drag you outside. To hit you for forgetting me and then force you into the car, to take you back home. I clench my teeth despite all this and control myself. Today is your birthday and a father, one who left early, can only watch from outside.

Upside down

In the middle of the noisy square, the man brandished the plastic wands, creating transparent and iridescent bubbles, which the wind would lure towards the heads of the passersby. One of the bubbles came and hovered in front of me. I glanced inside it and saw summer: sultry, sticky and wet, full of excitement, but inverted. At the top, I saw the azure chlorine of the swimming pool, red geraniums, fields with warm, freshly overturned soil, orange trees that dripped giant fragrant spheres upon the clouds. I saw the paper tablecloth barely holding on and the salad spoon that slowly poured bitter green olive oil onto the sky. I saw you afterwards, hanging hard onto the chair, your black hair flowing like water, and your white strands sinking again, like bulbs, inside the skull. I saw—I think—for a moment, your body naked, dark in the front and luminous in the back, diving towards the sky, upside down, approaching me. Quickly, I took money out of my pocket and bought the plastic wand.

One day I will create a large bubble. I will pierce it gently then will sit inside it, on a chair beside yours. I will brush your hair aside and will see you—one more time—even if upside down.

“The whale” by Ursula Foskolou

New Poetry in Translation (currently World Poetry Review)

It’s been years now since the whale swallowed me. I was sitting on a deserted beach, one September evening, and the heat felt like spring. The evening ferry—all lit up—was passing in front of me and I knew you were somewhere onboard: the kids running about, your frowning mother nearby, him holding you in his arms. I screamed in rage: “I hope a sea monster comes with a huge wave and rips open the belly of the ship with its fins. Just like that, so you’ll vanish.” And it came: slow, majestic, colossal. It stopped at the coast, jaws wide open, water dripping from its teeth like a transparent curtain. I stripped naked, straddled its long tongue, and sat in its mouth. We’ve been following for years now: the whale wanting to swallow you and I—eternally—holding it back.

“The old lady who swallowed her bedsheets” by Ursula Foskolou

New Poetry in Translation (currently World Poetry Review)

After grandpa died, we confined grandma to the bedroom. She raged from inside: she threw things at the walls, slammed the chair against the door, dragged her slippers across the floor, till she exhausted herself. One day we nailed the window shut, with two planks, like a cross, in case she thought of jumping. At first she howled. Her voice emerged, abrasive, from within her and scratched the walls. We stuffed food through a hole: soup, bread, yogurt. And water. Until one day she went quiet. They shoved me inside, to see. I sucked in my stomach and brought my legs together tightly, so that another person could have fit next to me through the concrete opening. Afraid, I entered the room and looked around. Nothing. On the bed there was only the bare mattress and a piece of bed-sheet wet with saliva, tied in knots, where the head used to rest.

“The house” by Ursula Foskolou

New Poetry in Translation (currently World Poetry Review)

When the house weighed upon her shoulders like a pack made of granite, my mom would open the small television cabinet and, silently pulling out the whiskey, fill a glass almost to the top. She would then sit quietly, elbows firmly planted on the wooden table, fix her gaze on the blank wall, and write. She would rip the pencil into her stomach, pull it up to her sternum and take out from inside of her everything that she had diligently kept hidden since she was little: songs and loves, sorrowful regrets, affections and burdens; and that interminable question—what’s for dinner.

“The dead” by Ursula Foskolou

Denver Quarterly [print only]

Yesterday afternoon, just before sunset, the dead started to emerge from the trees: white, bony, but clean; smelling of soap. I saw my uncle walking upright, his mustache neat, an ironed crease on his trousers and the sleeves chalk-white, fastened at the wrist with a small—and carved, I think—ornament made of ivory. He dragged behind him a long silk ribbon which had bouquets of blond hair tied upon it. The others gave him furtive looks and the sockets of their eyes dripped with jealousy. Instead of asking him what comes next, I sat down and I told him about you: your thick, wavy hair, your small lobes, which are like drops of clear water, and the smell of your flesh, which is stuck on me and won’t let me go. Later, as he was leaving, I begged him to take me with him. With a severe look—glittering, though hollow—he nodded to me to not be in a hurry; he showed me the ribbon he was dragging and it was as if he were telling me that even up there I’ll miss you.

“This is how things are” by Ursula Foskolou

TIMBER

In the sweaty room of some hotel an old man is shoving me into the bedspread. I struggle to breathe underneath his old wrinkled skin while he—wheezing and serious—pushes my body deep into the mattress. He crams his hands into my ribs, one after another, and his tongue—wet and icy—probes for life inside my mouth. His bristles, rugged and thorny, drill holes into my cheeks. Whenever I try to cry out my mother, thin and skeletal, appears. With her cold right hand, the one she crosses herself with, she covers my eyes tenderly and whispers: “This is how things are.” Her wrinkles gather her tears and I can think—with rage, exhaustion, and an inconsolable, dreary nostalgia—of you.

“Tonight” by Ursula Foskolou

TIMBER

Large and shiny like a kitchen knife, the eight o’clock train sliced the earth beneath us. I held your hand indifferently—just for the kids’ sake—and we climbed up the bridge, trying to catch up with the dust from the vanishing train’s last breath. I’m afraid that tonight—after days and many years—we will make love. I will undress you like a baby, and right there on the couch, with the tv’s blue light reflecting on your breasts and the children’s photos on the buffet, I will enter you violently, as if I am bursting. The cloth will rub on our backs and we will bleed a little and maybe upon finishing you will cry: for the children who have left, for your skin that has spoiled, for your white hair, and for me who, I’m afraid, will lie and tell you I still love you.

“In return” by Ursula Foskolou

TIMBER

Red hue on top of the boulders, the sun was close to setting behind the goats. Their bodies, tightly bound, cradled the iron bars, dripping watery blood upon the soil as if it were diluted. Their torrid scent would sneak into my nostrils and clench my innards. I scratched and licked the moistened stones; every now and then a muffled scream would seethe from beneath my teeth, a growl so terrible and enraged. “Quiet!” the man yelled all of a sudden. Then calmly, tenderly, almost laughing, he would bring me close to him, buying off my silence with a caress.