Artist’s and Editor’s Notes
Editor’s Note: Taking my old, white lady butt to visit a friend who is home-bound after knee surgery, I get off the subway at Grand Army Plaza. My phone’s GPS is useless. I am determined to ask directions of the first person I see. Here comes a young, handsome, cherubic Black man. I stop him. Do you know how I can get to Vanderbilt Avenue? “Yes. In fact, I’m heading there myself. I’ll walk you.” Those must be angel wings sprouting from his back. He mentions he’s going to Unnameable Books. I say, “Bookstore, huh. That’s unusual. Nobody reads anymore.” I ask if he’s also a writer. Of course he is. He’s a poet and a song writer. I tell him I’m an editor at Cable Street, give him my card, and ask him to send us some poems. The rest is history. A fluke of the universe, putting a poet in my path? Coincidence or sign? Reading my prosaic writing next to his poetic writing, I see it isn’t age, race, or sex that most defined our differences; it’s the difference between poetry and prose. Ya gotta love both forms.
Jan Schmidt
Artist’s Note: i’ve realized that one of the important joys of my life in brooklyn is feeling connected to the place and its people by foot. though i love driving (and grew up in the South where it was a quotidian necessity), nothing delights like a long walk in brooklyn, sprinkled with equal doses of the strange, the noisy, the smelly, the ludicrous, the serendipitous, the beautiful. my chance encounter with Jan in prospect heights was a wondrous combination of at least two of these.
it’s true, i was caught off guard by this older white woman asking me for directions…but experience would suggest i have a very approachable face. such is life. Jan turned out to be a fellow writer, lover of words, and lover of life’s chance encounters. i might go so far as to assert Jan and i share a love for connection, for the dice roll of seeking moments of feeling seen by strangers and loved ones alike.
these poems explore this longing for connection through the lens of translation. how do we make ourselves knowable to others? to ourselves, even? what effort of understanding, risk taking, and interpretation does that require from us, of us, with us?
brunson
brunson reading on translation AUDIO
on translation
out
upon this little limb in the world
i perch
myself here hoping
hoping to be swept away into the winds
of other wanderers
calling after the outside of me—
i am hoping it makes its way somewhere
beyond the borders of myself
into the bounds
of other worlds
& even if
we were capable of calculating a certainty,
this magical realism alchemical dance
would deliver a dizzy us, a
dooped us
each & every go round
out here
i can but only wonder
after the interiors i long to belong myself within
& so it is
we’ll give & take,
shaping our many selves within these slippery,
ephemeral
sounds
trading gestures of ourselves with each
breath
etching our personal into a permanent
& ever-changing stone slab that
just might some day shape, shift its way
into the edifices of another’s making,
of another’s meaning
i’ll take an imperfect proximity over
illusions of estrangement each & every
chance we get
& i’ll die
attempting
an expression that may, indeed,
never quite be known
& i’ll die, either way,
Attempting
brunson reading a poem on place AUDIO
a poem on a place
remind me, again
how i might say breakfast
how i might say i love these little waffles
we don’t have them in brooklyn, ya know
ya know, there, i might wake into natural light
the same sunstruck room with a bed big enough for two
i may ready myself with familiar scents
under the pour of hot water
fresh
sizzle
steam
cleansing a morning routine
that carries me across borders
that wakes me up just the same and i am reminded:
of well-made wood fashioned into a resting place,
mahogany that is almost certainly–no certainly not mahogany, but
i like how it looks underneath a line page
beneath a coffee prepared just so
and after a day like yesterday how could i not come back to this place
this table for one, for one’s morning delights
delights, like space to be by one’s own energy, taste
her with each mouthful of
coffee made just so
with each bar of bluetooth babbling blues or bachata or beats
made family by the space to listen
and so, some mornings feel soft feel like
do not disturb feel like
sunstruck saturday spongebob shenanigans
whispering into a resting household; feel like a wilting pillow
and blue blanket blessed by polka dots, reversible
feel like not a bad seat in the house
burgundy carpet and other 90s nostalgias
nostalgias like knowingthe world is only as big as
your weekend with friends
breakfast made by mom
and mouthfuls of waffles;
waffles dipped in something delicious
waffles dipped in nostalgia
and nostalgia over breakfast
brunson reading on fluency AUDIO
on fluency
and, i guess
i’m thinking:
this is the thing about
meeting a new language
learning a familiar discomfort
teaching myself a fresh humility
at each turn of an eager tongue
each
immovable
silence
grows
pregnant
with
anticipation
and
nothing
sounds
comes forth into the world
quite how i had
swaddled it in my head
for my half-held high hopes somehow hold me back
i stretch new muscles past their present
reaching somewhere past
the puberty of it all
the audible cracks in an
unweened confidence
graduate myself beyond that
lengthy middle not-quite-a-man’s land
not quite, the elders warn; don’t grow up too
fast
& we kids
wanting so badly
to disobey can
only turn time at
the pace of sun-spent push pops & good night moons
so i content myself with the warm & well-meaning,
the gentle glow of the nonchalant &
the not yet too profound
because i know disappointments
widen
with time
with a deeper vocabulary
with more to say
with a native’s fluency
* * *