e d w a r d s m a l l f i e l d
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childhood |
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…across the street from the house, a field. that was an era when the world was unfinished, when there were houses with adjacent fields, or, as in this case, across the street. in winter, the long wet grass & in summer the long parched brittle grass that rattled a little when we walked through it. underneath the grass the beginnings of the foundation of a house, somebody’s abandoned dreams. for us, as children, a ghost house, unfinished as a work of art desires to be unfinished, the sleepwalker’s map that imagination strays into… I played there with the twins, a boy & a girl. I remember that he was a little slow. later she ripened &… |
glitters |
a translation | |
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cicadas. crickets. oracle village dust or the leafy odor that blooms beside a river or a lake. late August nights. glittery ice cube music. laughter. blurred voices. someone tells an older woman that she must have had wings like that once, gossamer & probably enormous & perhaps even a little damp. & she answers… |
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of a translation | |
in a nutshell la vida a white wet with ghost milk membrane es sueño | |
la vida | |
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pointillist mist. erased horizon. no sea. no sky. only blue air stained with both. electric blue. an unexpected color. confected. sweet. sweet as twilight. slow as honey. as oil. poured in a Russian poem. stolen hours of. stolen love. do you remember? footsteps on sand. sound of. your own. you are the stain on the silence. the blue house shimmers. a mirage |
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es sueño | |
bang bang un sueño you pointed your finger at the man with the gun & shouted bang bang es la vida | |
EDWARD SMALLFIELD is the author of The Pleasures of C, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (a book-length collaboration with Doug MacPherson), locate (a chapbook collaboration with Miriam Pirone), and equinox. His poems have appeared in alice blue review, Barcelona INK, bird dog, e-poema.eu, New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, Páginas Rojas, Parthenon West Review, 26 and many other magazines. He lives in Barcelona with his wife, the poet Valerie Coulton. |
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