Issue 20

Summer 2019

triptych

Carl-Christian Elze
Translated by Caroline Wilcox Reul

1

pull the key from

the switch just

after ignition

the key to your

mind and travel on without

the answer adam and eve

the holy family

paris and oenone

moses .. as if your eyes

were glued to a

signal flare shooting

through colors planes

through blue-green

fog and spirals ..

you can’t sleep

while sound asleep

in flight you can’t

see anything sharply

not even a line and still

you see plenty

more than enough ..

your greatest wish

after so many years

of poverty maturity:

to be the infant

at her breast

on the river again. to be

the infant again

at her breast

on the river

 

 

2

she sits in the grass

and nurses her child while

we witness

yet still doesn’t seem

to arrive in the grass.

as if she were still running

still fleeing

like we all are fleeing

while we peer from faces

from framed dreams

someone else paints

without asking. but her look

her eyes say she wants

to be asked.

she nurses her child

while lightning flashes and

can see through the canvas

for a moment

she can see us

mighty as gods

standing before her

in pants too short

gazing in wonder.

what she doesn’t know:

it was just us she saw

cluster of bone, clay and color.

two images

facing each other

two spaces

exchanging awareness

 

 

3

when our gaze turns to him

half gypsy half soldier

on the left in the picture

a circuit closes

current flows

from us to him

from him to her

from her to us

as if we were

in the same room

a tiny portable altar

a quantum seam

stitched together ..

until it becomes hard

suddenly so difficult

at once unbearable

to no longer see

her brown eyes

to no longer return her watchful gaze

only sense it from the right

as particles

showers of electrons

reaching for souls

your magnetic fields ..

you can’t help but twitch

turn your electricity

back toward her

undermine

this triune of eyes.

soon it’s time to return

without eyes

pick up the journey again

(after »La Tempesta« by Giorgione, Accademia)

About the Author

Carl-Christian Elze lives in Leipzig and writes poems, short stories, and plays. He studied biology and German studies at the University of Leipzig, and later creative writing at the Deutsche Literaturinstitut Leipzig. Recent awards for his work include the Joachim-Ringelnatz Prize (2015) and residencies at the Künstlerhaus Edenkoben (2017) and the Deutsche Studienzentrum in Venice (2016), where he wrote the poems for his latest book langsames ermatten im labyrinth (Verlagshaus Berlin, 2019). Other recent books include diese kleinen, in der luft hängenden, bergpredigenden gebilde: poems (Verlagshaus Berlin, 2016), and Oda und der ausgestopfte Vater (kreuzerbooks, 2018).

About the Translator

Caroline Wilcox Reul is the translator of Wer lebt / Who Lives by German poet Elisabeth Borchers (Tavern Books, 2017) and the poetry editor for the Timberline Review. She was awarded the Summer/Fall 2018 Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation and Multilingual Texts. Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in the PEN Poetry Series, Tupelo Quarterly, Poetry International, Lunch Ticket, The Los Angeles Review, Exchanges, Newfound, and others.

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