SurVision Magazine
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An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Three
ROXANA ILIE
The Sly Vixen
In the
north of my left eye
a vixen lived
an unassuming one, with glass whiskers
I've known her since the moment my great-grandfather placed her there
to keep me warm
between the ribs
at night
when thirst made her whiskers tremble and quiver
you don't have be thirsty vixen
dig a second well into my bloodstream and drink to your heart's content
the vixen
sly as she was
kept running like crazy between my left eye and
the southern wall of the house
screaming at the top of her voice
don't weep Ană
your thirst will be quenched when the sun
turns sideways and vanishes
I set up some traps but couldn't catch the vixen
she produced her claws
turned back her head
she gathered beasts and feathers
dead animals with wooden legs
grandmother's old furniture (part of her dowry)
chocolates from Bombonica covered in cocoa powder
the ones once called amandines
fish from the suburban pond caught with a fishing rod
and hanging on the door hooks
the vixen will eventually get tired
rip her fur off, and the remnants of words will fall onto the stove
A Night Inside the Hand
there grew a tree
behind the house
at the dividing line between the two fingers of Middle-Hand
at night the tree retreated inside the hand that
people in the living quarters shook every morning
you too were among them you Domenik who gathered
roots between his knees with the force of a snake
stained by the fingers of waxed women
the tree carried on from dawn to dusk leaning
against your chest crying out do you renounce the living ones that I do
do you renounce the dead that I do – and the half-dead too
with flies in their bags saved for better days
when waxed women will kiss
the crosses on your chest and wash your feet in your tears
in your saliva in your cold fingernails on top of your
stove
The Taste Snake
there is a certain taste snake
that having caught sight of you
rolls over three times in the sand
and calls out its name's each syllable
it screws its head
into your bones
and you cover it with your skin over its skin
you'll never find out
that you've got
a bone snake inside you
the one that used to be a taste snake
Translated from the Romanian by the poet and Anatoly Kudryavitsky
a vixen lived
an unassuming one, with glass whiskers
I've known her since the moment my great-grandfather placed her there
to keep me warm
between the ribs
at night
when thirst made her whiskers tremble and quiver
you don't have be thirsty vixen
dig a second well into my bloodstream and drink to your heart's content
the vixen
sly as she was
kept running like crazy between my left eye and
the southern wall of the house
screaming at the top of her voice
don't weep Ană
your thirst will be quenched when the sun
turns sideways and vanishes
I set up some traps but couldn't catch the vixen
she produced her claws
turned back her head
she gathered beasts and feathers
dead animals with wooden legs
grandmother's old furniture (part of her dowry)
chocolates from Bombonica covered in cocoa powder
the ones once called amandines
fish from the suburban pond caught with a fishing rod
and hanging on the door hooks
the vixen will eventually get tired
rip her fur off, and the remnants of words will fall onto the stove
A Night Inside the Hand
there grew a tree
behind the house
at the dividing line between the two fingers of Middle-Hand
at night the tree retreated inside the hand that
people in the living quarters shook every morning
you too were among them you Domenik who gathered
roots between his knees with the force of a snake
stained by the fingers of waxed women
the tree carried on from dawn to dusk leaning
against your chest crying out do you renounce the living ones that I do
do you renounce the dead that I do – and the half-dead too
with flies in their bags saved for better days
when waxed women will kiss
the crosses on your chest and wash your feet in your tears
in your saliva in your cold fingernails on top of your
stove
The Taste Snake
there is a certain taste snake
that having caught sight of you
rolls over three times in the sand
and calls out its name's each syllable
it screws its head
into your bones
and you cover it with your skin over its skin
you'll never find out
that you've got
a bone snake inside you
the one that used to be a taste snake
Translated from the Romanian by the poet and Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Roxana Ilie is from Craiova, Romania. She is the graduate of the University of Bucharest, where she studied several languages. A winner of several national poetry competitions, she has had poems published in various Romanian literary periodicals, including Bucovina Literară, Fereastra, Sisif, and EgoPHobia, and in Zeta Internationale magazine, Italy. She has also published her translations from English, German, Italian, Portuguese and Russian poetry, some in book-form, including poetry collections by Edmundo Retana, The Realm of the Lost Things, and Yong Tae-Min, The Seventh Day (both from Spanish), and the book of prose poems by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, The Two-Headed Man and the Paper Life (from English.)
