A Journal of Translation
Issue 8 Summer 2015’s collection of publications.
Throughout my tenure as editor of Alchemy, I have been repeatedly surprised and charmed by translation’s unique ability to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Translation bring us not only new language, but also new ways to think …
Ricardo Ales is an artist graduating this year from UC San Diego’s Visual Arts department with a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art. He is continuing his education in the fall at Otis College of Art & Design and hopes …
Like the first cigarette, the first hugs. You had A little star made of paper Bright on top of the cheekbone And you occupied the marginal scene Where the parties gather the solitude, the music Or the gentle desire of …
I walked her home and to the back-door where she lived. There was nothing else or anything more remarkable about it. Goodbye, and thank you for walking me home, she said. Bye, I said. Your Hat! It’s better off that …
She was an introduction to men’s love stories. She was an added chapter. She was the division between chapters. And now she is my love story. But they’ve forgotten to print the words: All rights reserved. By Jón Thoroddsen Translated from …
A man in a frock coat representing incest Receiving congratulations from incest’s hot wind An exhausted rose supports a bird’s corpse Leaden bird where do you keep your basket of songs And the rations for your brood of clock-like snakes …
The fine, secluded odor of your armpits Heap-on-heap of straw crowns and fresh hay cut with fingers and asphodels and fresh skin and far off gallops like pearls Your hair’s scent under the blue water with black fish and sea …
When a giant tree commits suicide, Tired of already being dry and not producing Birds, without waiting for man to cut it down, Not waiting for the wind, With no leaves, it launches its last tune Symphonic explosion where once …
In telephone booths There are mysterious inscriptions drawn with lipstick They are the last words of sweet blond girls That, with bloody cleavage, take refuge there to die. Final night under the pale neon, final day under sky of hallucinations, …
In the Circus Maximus a very magnificent hunting spectacle was given to the people. There were many raging beasts, but above all the others, a lion attracted the attention of everyone with its enormous body and its loud and frightful …