Poet Tree

Another micro-poem poking at the macro-cosm. Now I don't feel like changing Clothes. I don't feel like smiling Back. I had a male gu...

A continuation of yesterday's poem , sort of . Neither beautiful, both magnetic. Why then bother with a horoscope, Wars, the turning of ...

Despite the Hungarian double entendre where "meleg" means both "warm" and "homosexual," the sentiment of losin...

Another Fabó poem about imbalances in relationship dynamics. Empty the room is, and the bed, And you are the one Who resembles me: you Are t...

People are confused by horse owners. Why would someone even? All they can think is the Kentucky Derby, Mint juleps and owning a fine steed T...

Once you find center           it's over,           you are free, Who you really           need to be, yourself a function of           ...

Another Fabó poem where the self, the other, gender and grammar can't be bent enough to writhe out of the trap. Women’s monologues are s...

This one had to be rescued from deep inside the Magyar culture to approach the universal. This woman cute? No I Won’t let that one carry the...

Fabó the linguist subverts gender here in non-gendered Hungarian, but it's for a greater, historical reckoning. I’m nominal female in th...

Fabó  was a master of portraying inward states of isolation in stark, physical terms. A mythic altar where they would be presented, that’s h...

Three more Fabó poems that document the bodily breakdown required for "jewels". Anatomy ​The outlook: a retinal mirror That lost i...

This sounds like a lot of intricate gears grinding to a halt in Hungarian, but in English it's something about language grinding the hea...

The Temptation There is no word for it in Latin, Only the skin remembers the lye And the taste of salt on the other body. Two poles identica...

The newborn, a shiny Frisian, So finely tuned with mom, Tails stroking on the same watch, Deep with the mother's All-knowing gaze Of vig...

A young Arabian Gets in whoever's face she can  Attract To plead for freedom. She turns her neck Like a lasso. Such authenticity Does no...

The Haflinger with the white tail Still sees a point in playing, Chasing the sun, saying hello Instead of playing hard to get With a mournin...

One of Fabó's later poems, ​A kövület reads like an autobiography of someone erased. ​The garden no longer responds. Just the lye vestig...

Fabó here makes the argument that March not April is the cruelest month for the sensitive ones. ​Spring doesn't just come. It breaks the...

Hugh Nguyen is a shoo-in to win With his Proven Leadership In the middle of horse country, A scale model in some ways But in others, it'...

The title poem from her 1988 collection, A herba‑szakértő You insist, you understand herbs from a distance. You're familiar with lethal ...

As other Eastern Europeans celebrated the toppling of walls in the early 90s, Fabó discovered a deeper, more intractable one. The gap betwee...

Dr. Seuss trees are native to this region But the indigenous in caves put the curse on anyway, Even the flightless cormorants -- whose babie...

From the Greek of C.P. Cavafy Age wears my body, tears at my form, Maimed by a cold-blooded blade. I have no fortitude, none whatsoever. I r...

Fabó believed that words trained you to become a slave. A word: not a baud. Small, hungry animals, who attack My flesh, they like to mastica...

Managers don't know and most importantly don't care What you are doing, and I am nothing if not an Aficionado of alienation as the o...

Linguist Fabó wrote this after the fall of Communism, while researching "the limits of the sayable."  A scream: not sound. A round...

A late-1980's short collected in A herba-szakértő (The Herbalist). The sky's a bile-poisoned pelisse over me. Murky, bulky, it suffo...

There are no translations of Kinga Fabó the literally mad Hungarian into English that I know of, a gap you will see from this poem needs to ...

One last breath of Cavafy's rarefied air on his birthday week, from 1917. I didn't hold myself back. I let myself go completely and ...

From an unpublished Cavafy fragment (1914) And so we're almost near, to be delivered. Cape Maleus materializes; We are finally in our ow...

From an unpublished fragment of Cavafy (1897) They issue the certificate in the bank of the future, Limited shares, a dangerous credit risk ...

As Cavafy's most famous poem, Ithaka has been translated many times. But as Cavafy's birthday present to me, I thought I'd try a...

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, who was born 163 years ago today and died 93 years ago today, spent most of his 70 years living alone as an obs...

Unpublished fragment from C.P. Cavafy (1917) Neither did I secure you, nor will you be secured Never, I suppose. A few words, an approach Li...

An unpublished fragment from C.P. Cavafy (1904) Precisely when I descended the stairs of the palace of whispers That's when you came to ...

The hologram revealed itself: she disappeared Not just from the tape but time: How to be new in the reboot, to forget That every passing sit...

Whatever happened to dandruff shampoo I ask as the shell removes itself And the elements go back to being elemental, The body revealed as po...

In our final look at Sappho, we see her reflect on her life and legacy. Conventional scholarship did not prepare me for how sad these fragme...

Another side of Sappho can be seen in her biting social commentary, which has come through only in small gnomic utterances. While fewer in n...

The ['s and ]'s in the original Aeolic Greek below represent gaps of indeterminate length in the physical papyrus that can't be ...

In this set of mostly destroyed fragments Sappho speaks for a culture where sexual conduct, ritual preparation and poetic receptivity are in...

Truth is often stranger than fiction: it would not seem logical that the model for the Cinderella story would be a fellow slave with Aesop, ...

These four fragments (along with 94 , 95 , 96 and 98 ) are almost certainly all that is left of a book of Sappho’s poetry (one of nine) los...

Ah the memory it always lurks Like a distant fountain, experience re-lived, The twinge at how the linens should be folded, That elbow grease...

It's the old vaudeville man and wife Horse suit costume routine I know, Show and tell at the ranch, with the two Horse brains on display...