#Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse

[majestativa]

Did blood make me a poet?

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)

[soracities]

Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse on translating Abdulla Pashew's "Resurrection" (essay here, full poem here) [ID'd]

[darkacamedia]

Abdulla Pashew | transl. from Kurdish by Hemn Bakr & Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse

[mythoughttherapy]

—Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse on translating Abdulla Pashew's "Resurrection"

[percolatorchai]

Dictionary of Midnight by Abdulla Pashew, tr. Alana Marie Levinson-Labrosse

[missedstations]

“Resurrection” - Abdulla Pashew

From time to time, sadness fills my throat and pain reaches its limit. Then, I wish to smash my life like a wine glass against a stone. But suddenly the gleam of the thread of a new idea, imagination’s hide and seek, the revival of a blade of grass, the burst of an infant’s laughter, the figure of beauty, the rebellious breasts of an ample woman compel me to take wings from happiness, to beg the heavens to stretch the bridge of my life so long I won’t be able to cross it, even in a thousand years. 9.5.1979 Moscow Translated from the Kurdish by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse

[pluga-pulga]

Mirror

The vague mirror of my time broke because
 it made what was small big
 and what was big small. Dictators and monsters filled its face. Even now as I breathe its shards pierce the walls of my heart
 and instead of sweat I leak glass.

Kajal Ahmad

  Trans. Darya Ali and Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse

[onetwofeb]

Abdulla Pashew, tr from Kurdish by Alana Marie Levinson-Labrosse

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Were I a Martyr --Kajal Ahmad --translated from the Kurdish by Darya Ali and Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse

I want no flowers, no epoch of union, no dawn of disunion. I want no flowers for I am the loveliest flower. I want no kisses if for a true wrist I must hold some knight – no epoch of marriage, no dawn of divorce, no widow's fever. I want no kisses if, along with love, I become a martyr. I want no tears over the coffin or me, a corpse. I want no cherry tree of sympathy dragged to the walls of my grave, no flowers or kisses, no tears or miseries. Bring nothing. Hold nothing. I die as a homeland without a flag, without a voice. I am grateful. I want nothing. I will accept nothing.

[majestativa]

Women with wings fall when they love vain men.

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)

[majestativa]

How addicted I am to freedom: I create life from death, lanterns from my scars.

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)

[majestativa]

My poetry is fire, my breath is fire, my affection, Zoroastrian.

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)

[majestativa]

I waited to be born. I was my own midwife. I bit my own umbilical cord. From here on, I am an ocean of refusal.

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)

[majestativa]

The new alphabet of this generation’s murdered dreams.

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)

[majestativa]

He is a knight in love’s army, the Shah of love because he burrowed into my heart to help the soil breathe.

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)

[majestativa]

He told me, “Shahrazad, stop this telling of tales. I cannot not kill you.”

— KAJAL AHMAD ⚜️ Handful of Salt, transl. by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse et al., (2016)