Contributions by Andrés Alfaro
Andrés Alfaro is a translator/musician/ping-pong-enthusiast who was found wandering the streets of California by his current loving mother at the age of sixteen months. As he grew up with his new family, he developed a penchant for reading and a curiosity for Costa Rica, his new father’s homeland. Eventually he would find himself living there and, for the first time, reading tico authors like Alexánder Obando, Carmen Naranjo, Felipe Granados, and others. If he were on a dating game show and were asked his one true desire, he would respond, “to see more Costa Rican authors in translation.” He has translated many authors including Felipe Granados’ Soundtrack, Alexánder Obando, Alfredo Trejos, Arabella Salaverry, Marvin Bell (into Spanish) and, now, Natalia Litvinova. He worked extensively with MahMag.org, an online quadrilingual literary journal. He resides in Iowa City, Iowa.
Natalia Litvinova
translated by Andrés Alfaro
DUST
My voice seems not to come from me but rather from another throat
buried within the depths of my own.
I am like a collection of walls surrounding what I am.
Someone must have built this great wall.
If there are men who fly like feathers, why can I not
move when I move? I smell of stone and dust,
I wear the traces of those who touch me.
I am dust, stone. I do not know who my father is.
* *
FEAST ON MY SNOW
I whisper to the birds: leave my poems, feast on my snow.
I whisper to the snow: get out of my poems,
dig in, taste the birds’ eggs.
Birds’ eggs take wing.
Do not let the shell of stillness devour you.
* *
THE SPRING OF BALTHUS
Balthus’ desire was never realized. The white of the
girl’s underwear brought back … Read More »
sending...