Author: Anna Hoffmann
winged with wrath / necrologist with discipline
born with a fall into the collective
grammar hammered deep into the hypothalamus
every I a we that was dreaming
venus-anus-vanitas
mine is the outcast
the culled cattle that bellows
beneath the bloated moon
that pulses in the candied peel of barren suns
my day has no place no year
& every we just an I
torn out / papered on
a story without a story
psychosomatically we cut open
our arteries after barely
sleeping through our resurrection
of course there are ineradicable
connections between my
throat & your hands as long as we
hold on to each other
you play first violin in the wrath of god
(everything conceivable)
COMMON SENSE IS A LIE
like any other word
and woman a safety valve
archaeology today: an old man a child-
hood friend an outsider
three witnesses of future force
groaning I show it the way
to the country of origins that’s wetter
than euphrates & tigris
where the traces of the latest sacrifice
are bloodier than the hands of the hun
how many epochs per centimetre
& THAT too sinks in the silence of tongues
horoscope
nothing new for nose eye ear
uninterrupted august
the orthodox cats
motionless in their summer coats
purring below the windows
outside the heat claws
into the backs of dogs
until smog-scarred evenings
rise up into antique cat faces
from green pools
& overhead bats
burning their wings on the moon
fall from the sky
ratwards
I swallow a flower
like gin like too much gin
my shadow beats across you
we fuck with intent
we hold on like cats
among disused stars
Original © Anna Hoffmann
Translation © Catherine Hales
See Anna Hoffman’s poems in Catherine Hales’ translation,
no man’s land #1