I lose my mind, you’re without foreskin.
I’m hurt, I lose my mind.
I want you to be like me,
I have my foreskin. Hi-yah,
Hi-yah, I leaned on slates, but
still it drew me
down, it cut my fingers.
Grayness is bomb.
Smooth and moist it shines.
With treasure go the amadous,
moved by carbon arc light.
From tendril to mountain, from
mountain to steep abysse. The jug of
sage, until I didn’t step in the enlarged
head of the fly. Hot bitumen poured
from the inner walls of its mouth.
I was skilled with acqua alta,
but it was hot and there were
snails here, fried by heat.
Snails were normal size, but the
fly was enlarged about
two thousand four hundred times.
The square in Ispahan is eight times
bigger than San Marco square in
Venice. St. Mark in Cortona is
sculpted in profile. Snails are
drenched in black by now
and the two thousand four hundred
times enlarged fly’s head is still
a coat room, not a hall.
Nail the verb to find! Confucius died
in a stirrup. They come and
glitter, he said, they’re like toys.
Tomaž Šalamun lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He taught during the spring 2011 semester at Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas. His recent books translated into English are The Blue Tower (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) and On the Tracks of Wild Game (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012). His Soy realidad translated by Michael Thomas Taren will be published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2014.
Michael Thomas Taren was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His poems have been published in HTMLGIANT, The Claudius App, and Fence and are forthcoming in Bestoned. He spent nine months in Slovenia on a Fulbright Scholarship (2010-2011). His manuscripts Puberty and Where is Michael were finalists for the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2009 and 2010, respectively. His book Nile will be published by Vagabond Press in Fall 2013.