I’m not a city

Kinga Fabó

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 separately.
Ongoing magic. Broad topsy-turviness.
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.

“I’m not a city: I have neither light, nor
window display. I look good.”

Translated by Gabor G. Gyukics

False Thread

Kinga Fabó

Seasons jam up.
Drill through the spring.
Winter, summer start attacking.

The flood makes a run.
Surging again and again
stalls and then throngs ahead.

Under the sea, the land is shaking.
(The unhoped front comes with such commotion.
While the other is dragging a heatwave.)

The shipwrecks of the lips: pilling of syllables.
Slurs and stutters.
Breaks and floods the words with anger.

It hits. Or gets hit by a syllable
culminating above on it.
Gives no time to get resentful.

There is its double if it bales out.
None holds a grudge against none.
It hits. Or let others beat it.

The client is the same man.
Hiding in my shadow.
Matters not what I say or do.

There is no love: Spring’s been postponed.
It might be hiding in my shadow.
Snip. I’ll cut you up, you false thread.

(An iceberg broke of fin Greenland.
The woods are on fire around Moscow.
The air is poisonous above Moscow.)

Translated by Gabor G. Gyukics

 Old Bitch of a Summer

Kinga Fabó

(For her Sake:) furioso

Her revenge is a long wrench. Her
blood-drenched sword will not deter
her drummed up horde to pester me.
A stabbing tour: a feast to see!

She flaunts her lust to hurl me blind,
wanting to carry me beyond.
The old bitch pants away. Behind
the panting horde, with her up front.

She out-pants it. As she does me.
Plays pathetic spells ne’er to be.
The banner proudly swells on
preparing a vengeful affront,

for what? For her earsplitting squall?
No one for her lust to clutch?
Abundant is her bitter gall.
Bitches hate bitches this much.

The watch prods a conceited cusp.
If only for fair play – just once!
Hysterically howls the wind.
In her throat the dust.

The watch for revenge is tough.
It breaks up the goal-event; bluff!
The match is called off.

She hurls down. Enraged beast!
Matter is thin, swig is short.
Thirst for revenge is her gloat.

Her revenge has more to see.
She has had it to a tee.
Breaks down and lets it be.

Sharpening her caustic sting,
its poison spills on my skin.
Sap for revenge flows,

penetrates deeply, as summer into fall.
Illicitly lodges where no one should stall.

Hangs on my neck: not for her path.
Her tongue daggers itself to death.

Drags it in circles. Lassoes me
’round. – Drums up her clan.

Ticking away, the old bitch is.
Catch me she will, where’er I am.

Translated by Katarina Peters, finishing touches by Kinga Fabó

Kinga Fabó

Hungarian poet Kinga Fabó‘s latest book, a bilingual Indonesian-English poetry collection titled 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 with an introduction by Szirtes.

Some of her individual poems have been translated into 17 languages altogether: Albanian, Arab, 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, like logics or the philosophy of language, and an essayist, too, interested in issues from the periphery, from the verge. She has also written an essay on Sylvia Plath.

In everything she’s done, Fabó has always been between the verges, on the verge, in the extreme.

She lives in Budapest, Hungary.

Read more of Kinga Fabó’s poetry on Meta/Phor(e)/Play and in the April issue of The BeZine, Celebrating International Poetry Month. 

Poems ©2017 Kinga Fabó, digital art ©2017 Michael Dickel.