KINGA FABÓ

KINGA FABÓ

I’M NOT A CITY

I’m not a city: I have neither light, nor

window display. I look good.

I feel good. You didn’t

invite me though. How

did I get here?

You’d do anything for me; right?

Let’s do it! An attack.

A simple toy-

wife? I dress, dress, dress

myself.

The dressing remains.

I operate, because I’m operated.

All I can do is operate.

(I don’t mean anything to anyone.)

What is missing then?

Yet both are men seperetaly.

Ongoing magic. Broad topsyturviness.

Slow, merciless.

A new one is coming: almost perfect.

I swallow it.

I swallow him too.

He is too precious to

waste himself such ways.

I’d choose him: if he knew,

that I’d choose him.

But he doesn’t. My dearest is lunatic.

In vain he is full: He is useless

without the Moon, he can’t change,

he won’t change,

the way the steel bullets spin: drifting,

the blue is drifting.

He tolerates violence on himself, I was afraid

he’d pull himself together and

asks for violence.

I watched myself

born anew with indifference:

(if I melt him!)

stubborn, dense, yowls. They worked on him well.

Right now he is in transition.

He is a lake: looking for its shore.

(TRANSLATED BY GABOR G. GYUKICS)

ANESTHESIA

I thought: he’d clean me out.

But he only vaporized me.

Strained my colors.

Crinkled them back. Inside the statue.

Then came the odors.

The badly installed roots.

As corpus delicti.

On the operating-table.

I’m sterile.

Famous outside.

Empty inside.

My auxiliary verbs are men with headdresses.

His donation: railway tracks without smile;

always ready for tragedy –

strange, like a heartbeat –

sin is only a decoration.

I have no peace. I’m certain:

I’ll take root somewhere.

He is a professional.

He wants me frozen.

(TRANSLATED BY GABOR G. GYUKICS)

LOVERS

You are free, said the stranger.

Before I arrived there.

Costume. I had a costume on though.

I was curious: what his reaction might be?

He closed his other eyes.

I’ll send an ego instead of you.

Getting softer, I feel it, he feels it too. Hardly moves. He chokes himself inside me.

Now I must live with another dead man.

It’s not even hopeless.

Not vicious.

Serves the absence.

Delivers the unnecessary.

(TRANSLATED BY GABOR G. GYUKICS)

POISON

I don't know what it is but very ill-

intended. Surely a woman must belong to it.

And something like a laughter.

I am rotating the city on me,

rotating my beauty. That's that!

Many keys, small keyholes whirling.

Gazes cannot be all in vain. And the answer?

Merely a jeer.

The vase hugs and kills me, can't breathe.

Now my features – even with the best intentions –

cannot be called beautiful.

And her? The girl? Her trendy perfume

is Poison. For me a real poison indeed.

And the vase?

It hugs and kills me.

But what am I to do without?

(TRANSLATED BY KINGA FABÓ)

ANDROGEN

The bees are tough, hard to break virgins.

Virgins, but different from us humans.

They have no ego. Hermaphrodites. Like the moon.

Butterflies. Phallic souls.

Soul phalluses in female bodies.

The daughter, daughters of the moon

allured me but only until

I figured them out.

As lovers.

I got tired of my ego.

And theirs too.

I’m bored of their services.

It wedges an obstacle between us. Neither

in nor out. In vain

I keep trying. I can break through

mine somehow.

But his? How?

Selfish, inspiring; but for what?

Is he like this by nature,

subservient, dependent?

On me? That’s dispiriting.

He doesn’t even suspect, that I depend on him.

I am the stronger, the unprotected.

Tough as a woman, austere.

Delicate as a man, fragile, gentle.

What would I like? I want him to

wrestle me gently to the floor,

penetrate me violently, savagely.

So I can become empty and neutral.

Impersonal, primarily a woman.

(TRANSLATED BY GABOR G. GYUKICS)

ISADORA DUNCAN DANCING

Like sculpture at first. Then, as if the sun rose in her, long

gesture.

A small smile; then very much so.

The beauty

of the rite shone; whirling.

She whirled and whirled,

flaming.

Only the body spoke. The body carried her

language.

Her dance a spell

swirling the air, a spiral she was

and

her shawl, the half circle around her,

the curve of the sea-shore and

girl,

the dancer and the dance apart…

(TRASCREATED BY CATHY STRISIK AND VERONICA GOLOS BASED ON KATALIN N. ULLRICH’S TRANSLATION.)

The Transfiguration of the Word

Open, the sea appeared asleep.

Carrying its waves.

A pulse under the muted winter scene.

Throwing a smile on the beach.

A nun-spot on the hot little body.

A color on the broken glass.

A gesture that was once closed.

Lovely as the sea stood up.

Throwing a smile on the beach.

I wanted to remain an object.

But, no, immortality is not mine.

I am too strong to defend myself.

Waiting for punishment.

This and the same happened together.

Silently, I sat in the glass.

Only the spot wandered on the naked scene.

Sounds did not continue.

Only an omitted gesture.

Happiness like an unmoving dancer.

Beatings on naked, bony back.

And the sea will no longer be immortal.

(TRANSLATED BY ZSUZSANNA OZSVÁTH AND MARTHA SATZ)

KINGA FABÓ

KINGA FABÓ: Is a Hungarian poet. Her latest book, a bilingual Indonesian-English poetry collection Racun/Poison was published in 2015 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Fabó’s poetry has been published in various international literary journals and poetry magazines including Osiris, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Screech Owl, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear, Numéro Cinq, Deep Water Literary Journal, Fixpoetry, lyrikline.org and elsewhere as well as in anthologies like The Significant Anthology, Women in War, The Colours of Refuge, Poetry Against Racism, World Poetry Yearbook 2015, and others. Two of her poems have been translated into English by George Szirtes and are forthcoming in Modern Poetry in Translation Spring Issue (in June) with an introduction by Szirtes. Some of her individual poems have been translated into 17 languages altogether: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, English, Esperanto, French, Galego, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Tamil. One of her poems (The Ears) has among others six different Indonesian translations by six different authors. Earlier in her career Fabó was also a linguist dealing with theoretical issues, and an essayist, too, interested in topics from the periphery, from the verge. She has also written an essay on Sylvia Plath. – As for fiction, her story, translated by Paul Olchvary is forthcoming in  Numéro Cinq July issue. Fabó has just become Poetry Editor at Diaphanous, an American e-journal for literary and visual art. In everything she’s done, Fabó has always been between the verges, on the verge and in the extreme. She lives in Budapest, Hungary.