a r l e n e a n g

from approximative translations

if
this shoe :
all unknowing
& blue danube : the keyhole with
its retractable key : for better or for worse : substance driving

without benefit of cured sweet ham : the controlled dead

burning its furniture for a place in the fire : prescription clouds ribbed in the

manner of adam : take one before planting a nail in one’s foot & one more

for dreaming : a screen door fills up on fungus : water

affects the glass by refracting the straw : how moon widows the fish
bowl : a vacancy sign that is
a tongue that
is a
shoe

two: union

soft
cap of
movement : where two
imagines its twoselves in a
house lit by snow : beauty of the fallen : curtains billow a cask

of gunpowder : the führer shaving ice for his guests & calling it

his little arctic ocean : the ache in the tooth cradles the caries

of desire : socks on the clothesline volunteering a water source : as if holes

in the eaten fabric were lips : burnt offerings &

the obligation to occupy skin : divisible by one’s
remembrance of irrelevant
details : an egg
dashed in
half

four: totem
not a sea port : a whistle with dangling piglets on a chain : the belief that tearing apart a birthday present can locate the boy on the milk carton : to possess nightmares is to feed them the dreamer’s eyes : tornadoes crying the sound box & memories of foreign objects under these fingernails : what is accumulation if not being pronounced dead yesterday : the room structure is such that it includes the city : dear pressure cooker all lit up in bone : four selves tattooed on across the chest : live & burn
next
ARLENE ANG lives in Spinea, Italy. Her poetry has been published in Forklift, Ohio, juked, Pom2, Rattle and Unpleasant Event Schedule. She is the recipient of The 2006 Frogmore Poetry Prize and serves as a poetry editor for The Pedestal Magazine. Website: http://www.leafscape.org/aang/