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.