Katarzyna Szaulińska (translated by Mark Tardi)
i;phigenia/i;saac
they gave us names beginning with i
there’s no need for a conjunction between god and father
i
makes sense in some languages
but only the separated rest
and our heads weren’t separated from the rest of the body
though sur;vival
is a dot turned into a semicolon & has gravitas
when i was little i ate yew arils with him
the seeds are said to be poisonous but the aril tastes mild sweet & is slippery
i was too young to blush
& even when they lowered the knives it was done
& if they’d killed we wouldn’t live with this body next to the body
his living body
cuts the pickled cucumber into quarter-inch cubes
with a specially designed knife
he cuts my air
into unbreathable
your name meant laugh mine meant strength
their laugh their strength
because we’ll always
be;long
because you can’t skip
de;capitation
re;demption
gaseous
the body’s gone autumnal the hands fallen
limbs & ochre trees already infiltrating me
my plasma’s pure broth & I’m overflowing
to settle somewhere like scum on a strainer
while what’s liquid in me flows down the drain
and what’s solid in me must be tared away
fold unfold the viscera like an accordion
just space out the breathing four stations apart
or maybe I’m in the lunula of my thumb
a penny of skin sucked into a chinese cup
or maybe a collapsed lung or this plastic
which almost slurped it out of me became alive
& maybe I’ll leave more than just dirt behind
a kind of egg carton emptied of my body
the gnarled spot of my severed stalk
which’ll become a thunderbolt & strike you
--
Katarzyna Szaulińska was born in Kołobrzeg in 1987. Her debut collection Druga Osoba [Second Person] was the winner of Biuro Literackie’s first-book award and published in 2020. She has published work in respected literary journals in Poland, such as Mały Format, Helikopter, Kontent, Fabularie, Wakat, and Kultura Liberalna. English translations of her work have appeared in La Piccioletta Barca and a chapbook, Faith in Strangers, is forthcoming from Toad Press. She is also the author of a comic book about depression entitled Czarne Fale/Murky Waves and the one-woman show Córcia [Baby girl], which was staged at the Warsaw Theatre. She lives in Warsaw, where she works as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist.
--
Mark Tardi is a writer, translator, and lecturer on faculty at the University of Łódź. He is the author of three books, most recently, The Circus of Trust (Dalkey Archive, 2017). Recent work and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Circumference, Armstrong Literary, Berlin Quarterly, La Piccioletta Barca, Notre Dame Review, Asymptote, Anomaly, and Periodicities. His translation of The Squatters’ Gift by Robert Rybicki is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press in 2021.