from The Station at the river
translated from Italian by Joanna Bishop
1.
on the platform. everybody in the same direction. coming out of the hangar the carriage speeds
up their movement. shunts in the opposite direction. on the left the two cranes are yellow. they
are dedicated to
formation of a square. margin. two segments up above.
on the following side. sails-a-way. leeward. hills: tuscan-like. storage structure, artificial lake. as
if for signatures along the serpentine they’ve planted cypress trees. towless trailers. smokestack
striped red and white. at the end.
describing it not as badly. it seems. that a row of olive trees has gained the crest of opinion. of
the hill. which has the space seen on one side. motivation. splits the wind.
on the fully cut lawn. one wedge is acute – a hedge – closing off a shed. the piled tools. heaps
of gravel – looks like salt. looks like many other things as well. what goes by opens
2.
nine in the morning what is left.
market. arranging in an arrow. you have no grounds to say you do not ask what would new york
have been like without language. you ask
what you would have been like without work. been that group 19 austrians outside the bar-hotel
sun.
- been stripe. the raincoats.
horizontal metal rod piazzetta paradiso. ten each. egg yellow to:
so you would have been objectivity. to use a simplification.
9:55, g.l.: “they would prove to be neither new nor difficult”. philologists don’t trace the sources.
in your mother’s arms. 1973 in a house full of stairs without railings safe and sound.
Author
Marco Giovenale (1969) lives in Rome, where he works as an editor and translator. He’s a contributor to
alfabeta2 and l’immaginazione, as well as the founder and editor of gammm.org (2006). In 2011, he took
part in the Bury Text Festival in Manchester. His work has appeared in the following magazines: «il verri»,
«l’immaginazione», «Nuovi Argomenti», «Action Poétique», «Nioques», «OEI», «Aufgabe», «Capitalism
Nature Socialism». His recently published books in Italian include: Strettoie (Arcipelago Itaca, 2017),
Il paziente crede di essere (Gorilla Sapiens, 2016), Maniera nera (Aragno, 2015), Delvaux (Oèdipus, 2013),
In rebus (Zona, 2012), Shelter (Donzelli, 2010), La casa esposta (Le Lettere, 2007). He has also published
the following books in English: a gunless tea (Dusie, 2007), CDK (Tir-aux-pigeons, 2009), anachromisms
(Ahsahta Press, 2014), white while (Gauss PDF, 2014). His work in “asemic writing” has been published
in the following books: Sibille asemantiche (La camera verde, 2008), Asemic Sibyls (Red Fox Press, 2013).
Follow him online at slowforward.net.
Translator
Johanna Bishop grew up in Pennsylvania, was pigeonholed as a future translator by a standardized test in middle school, and has embraced that fate full-time since 2004. Her poetry translations include Danza del ventre a Tel Aviv, by Karen Alkalay-Gut (co-translated into Italian with Andrea Sirotti, Kolibris, 2010), and For the Maintenance of Landscape, by Mia Lecomte (with Brenda Porster, Guernica, 2012). Her translations of other contemporary poets have appeared in the anthology Canone Inverso (Gradiva, 2014) and in the reviews TheFLR, Italian Poetry Review, Here - Notes from the Present, andJournal of Italian Translation. She lives near Florence.