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Two poems by Raquel Chalfi in translation

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On the Shore, Tel Aviv, Winter 1974 From the Songs of Crazy Dolores

Assiduity Twenty One

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Blue skies greet us as we exit the forest . . .

The Night We Saw Shehenshah

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‘In terms of relationship, I am your Father – my name is the Emperor’.

A Hiaku for Her

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the lonely, only

How To Make Potato Salad

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Boil 8-10 red potatoes and 6 eggs in heavily salted water. Remember that the first chef you worked under taught you to salt egg-boiling water because the salt breaks down membranes between shell and meat, making the egg easier to peel later on. Decide tha

Going Organic

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I should probably make it clear up front that I am not in my right mind, which I quite understand compromises the credibility of what I'm about to say. Without going into the history of my minor and somewhat more major psychotic episodes, my psychiatrist, unsure how finally…

Dead Woman's Shoes

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Loving you, I always knew, was a job I’d only get via a dead woman’s shoes. There you were, the recipient of pot roasts, fresh bread, at a loss amongst neighbourhood widows and divorcees. A tide of them rolled over you in calico blouses, cut off jeans

Dublin

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My swinging purse sent saucers tinkling to the tile and the copper-headed waitress flew over, swooping on the shatter, clutching clean forks like a handful of flowers.

Executing the Trade

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Prospero's in his cell and I'm in mine. He drowns his books, I'm drowning in mine. He exercises his power–I'm powerless to exercise.

When Spring Comes Will the Grass Grow by Itself?

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Lila began to hear whispers coming from her home's air vents and quickly assumed people were watching her. Maybe that was why the yard was not progressing she thought. The unknowns talking to her through the vents had control over everything she did.

Announcing Human Season

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Contest rules are simple. Two teams of five hunters each are established by drawing from pools of interested volunteers and selected prison inmates confined for capital crimes and illegal immigration.

Capitalism in the electronic age

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Then I would say to my new friends, “My God, look at all the weight you’ve lost.” Even when they hadn’t lost any. Even when they were fatter than before.

This Is Not Your Poetry

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Your begging hands are hacking me up again like garden claws that know not the difference between a delicate solar powered flower and a tightening choke of killing weeds.It's not like it's even mine to keep-- like a legal document I'd…

Beowulf Is Pillow

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Now that school is back in session, we move through our days like cage fighters, tagging in and out of matches: The Battle of the Bottle, The Diaper Duel, The Pout Bout. So while I'm assembling a casserole for tomorrow, Susan feeds Margot. While she washe

A Leaf For Instance is Only a Green Enough Calling Card(A Valentine)for Someone if You Care to Mail It

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Because you alone must know how to make a smile shine at me and be like the sun, I can only feel its warm and coolish colors becoming that perfectly deepened yellow then on to the red if you please that makes a shy kind of blue out of day. That…

Window

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Seen from the window, …

The Application of Birds

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I know someone in need of healing.

Year End Close-out

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Strauss does all the stirring at the start./ The rest is all murk and meander

Watching the End of the World from the Beginning of a New Revolution

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We were always going to be here. This isn't thebig reveal. It's not even the best last joke. That's to come. Like the apocalypse that it always wants tobe, like playing with the big planet gods. Nothing says we're all doomed like another cold beer. Wave the…

Too many leaves

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This late November day there are too many leaves filling the yard.

Assiduity Fifteen

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I'm in love with Uzma Goef, a beautiful young woman less than half my age.

Tales Told near Tsmebrovht-5

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“—but although we've catalogued instances of this on other planets, it seems never to've led to the global outbreak of psycho-phrenias and neuro-pathologies as those that plagued the Tiānxiàns!”

Your Pajamas

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Your pajamas torture us. When moist they uncomfortably cling. They have evil buttons, and they cause us to stumble on them in the dark.

Butterflies and Fresh Paint

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For PearlSo radiantly a threat to themare you, so radiantly a threatyou present, my dear, but between usthere is still that unspoken pact; justone more song, please. So radiantlyyou fill their cups with the beauty ofleaves and grapes. So radiantly yoursmall reassuring smile…

Seasonals

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Jasmine as skeined skins… of liquid hers, by willow courts, the lychee's water wains: as apple-moats flush fawn in russet light, through cherry floats, the leopard-dots of dawn. Branch to branchlet green …

she laughs now with wine

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was about a girl/he never met/across cold steel tracks/at cold sunsets.

The Dummy's Guide to Marriage Proposals

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She first asked him to marry her when she was five, when 'marry me' meant 'I like you more than anybody else' and she loved everybody around her who was nice to her. And he was so very nice to her. …

In Search of Dawn

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the air is a fierce tangerine tonight

To Fill the Hollows

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most famously, a small/ writhing dog. A thousand casts were made/ before they stopped

Raleigh

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My dad / always had a fondness for Raleigh’s kind of loss