256 article(s) translated from Spanish

The Eagle

by Ambar Past

I only learn to be content. —Shogun Tokugawa     For Brisa Tinoco  and those who have emailed asking  if it’s true an old eagle  sits alone on the mountaintop, …...

Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee bilingual version

Holding Pattern

by Juan Villoro

I’m so uneasy with reality that I find planes comfortable. I surrender myself, resigned, to movies I don’t want to see and food I don’t want to eat, as if practicing a disciplined spiritual…...

Translated from Spanish by Lisa M. Dillman bilingual version

And If You See That I Don’t Come Back

by Luis Nuño

Look at you, you’re soaked! I’ve been waiting hours for you. Out to buy cigarettes in the middle of all this! We need to talk. What about the cigarettes? Don’t tell me you didn’t…...

Translated from Spanish by Maureen Shaughnessy bilingual version

The Man Who Buried Himself

by Miguel de Unamuno

It was extraordinary, the change that came over my friend. The jovial, witty, and carefree youth had become a melancholic, taciturn, and cautious man. His moments of abstraction were frequent, and in them…...

Translated from Spanish by Emily Calderwood Davis bilingual version

There is No Theorem (A Regguetón)

by Omar Pérez

There is no theorem just the combination 10,000 years of going with digressions: I write regguetones, forget the variation. There is no theorem from the mist itself the primates descend in search of phonemes…...

Translated from Spanish by Kristin Dykstra bilingual version

The Other Day After the Rain

by Johan Moya Ramis

I. Once again, the erection. The body’s first signal, heaving me back into reality every time I awake. The Hebrew Kabbalists say that during the night God takes souls on a mystical journey; the privileged…...

Translated from Spanish by David Iaconangelo bilingual version

Self-Portrait

by Frank Baez

At one and a half I rolled up the stairs to the second floor. At six I almost drowned in a pool. At seven a current swept me down a river. They hit me with a stick, with a rifle-butt, with a two-by-four.…...

Translated from Spanish by Hoyt Rogers bilingual version

The Crane

by Juan Carlos Flores

Aguardiente comes cheap, meat comes dear (somewhat drunk he tap dances over the wet cobblestones, scoring importance from the conjectured case of fractured bone). “Young man, you have to stay thin,…...

Translated from Spanish by Kristin Dykstra bilingual version

Deus ex Machina

by José Mármol

Throw the dice, Lord, your turn has come and it is winter. The trident is cornered, the mountains covered with a skin of ash. Lord, behold light’s song here, your due, in the stillness of the sea…...

Translated from Spanish by Erica Mena bilingual version

From the Grave of My Grave

by José María Lima

from the grave of my grave a hollow-now open advancing my love, her stairs her name, her signs advancing the same. with my brother the vine and its roots lift here and there. stalker-yesterday pretends…...

Translated from Spanish by Erica Mena bilingual version

Alive or Dead

by Jorge Olivera Castillo

A metal gate bars his path, and thwarts any hope for the pursued. But then he leaps for it, and easily gains the top. It is his instinct of self-preservation that allows him to accomplish this intricately…...

Translated from Spanish by Amanda Hopkinson

Invention of the Day

by José Mármol

certainty of thursday in flesh. solitude. dry bottle. slow drizzle. brief premonition of wearing down. of earned absences. thursday’s tone in each climate, in each city alike. because time was born…...

Translated from Spanish by Erica Mena bilingual version

Bird’s Nest

by Aurora Arias

Luminous missionaries our sexual bodies perfect as a bird's nest carnivorous, incomparable.   The bodies of virgins hold all the dreams the honeyed bodies of whores hold all the men The bodies…...

Translated from Spanish by Erica Mena bilingual version

Requiem

by Slavko Zupcic

That day—I remember it clearly, I had decided while I was waiting for the bus into town: I would steal a book. When it finally came, I sat next to a woman who was coming from the hot springs; so…...

Translated from Spanish by Jeremy Osner bilingual version

Bonsai

by Guadalupe Nettel

Our bodies are like Bonsai trees. Not one innocent leaf can grow freely, without being viciously suppressed, so narrow is our ideal of appearance —Khyentsé Norbu   After I got married,…...

Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

Never Any End to Hemingway

by Eduardo Halfon

Well here we are, he wrote to Anderson, as he lay there, smoking. He liked typing letters from his bed with the black Corona on his lap. And we sit outside the Dome Café, opposite the Rotonde that’s…...

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

For Antonio Gamoneda

by Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas

I wanted to write like Antonio Gamoneda, so I went to León and, after visiting the cathedral to ask God to forget me, I arrived at the poet’s house. Maestro, I said, tell me, reveal to me…...

Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee bilingual version

For Álvaro Pombo

by Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas

We are accomplices and accomplices have no reason to embrace or kiss or mourn their own dead or ours.  We live in endless complicity with shameful times that have become scars and ashes in our memory. …...

Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee bilingual version

For Eugenio Montejo

by Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas

Serene, Salinas, grows the air and decks itself in beauty and unaccustomed light when consummate music sounds steered by your knowing hand.      Tr. Michael Smith     …...

Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee bilingual version

Alaska

by Horacio Castillo

The eye of the seal—my amulet—will lead me to the white bear. Is there anything more beautiful than to pursue the white bear over the white ocean? I’ve followed his trail now through…...

Translated from Spanish by Samuel Gray bilingual version

The White Breast, the Black Breast

by Horacio Castillo

My mother had a white breast and a black breast. Upon waking she would take the white breast in her hand and lifting it to my lips say: Drink, my child, and I would drink a very sweet, thick white milk.…...

Translated from Spanish by Samuel Gray bilingual version

Living to Write: An Interview with Doménico Chiappe

by Jonathan Blitzer

Jonathan Blitzer: “The Writer of Memories,” the story we’ve published in this issue of the magazine, is the first one to appear in your book of stories, Párrafos Sueltos (2003).…...

Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer

Vigils

by Ernesto Mejía Sánchez

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) produced a good many translations of Spanish-language poetry during the course of his poetic career, as well as translations of Greek, French, and Chinese poems.…...

Translated from Spanish by William Carlos Williams bilingual version

With March’s Moon the Photo

by Olvido García Valdés

with March’s moon the photo arrived and we were all alive; rapid words from that essence that is fast and that turns and detaches itself; slow, the moon, returns month by month Translation of “[con…...

Translated from Spanish by Catherine Hammond bilingual version

Epistle

by Horacio Castillo

Jews ask for signs, Greeks for wisdom, but I say: Go crazy. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? The light of the world has been palmed. You’re blind? Rejoice in your blindness. You’re…...

Translated from Spanish by Samuel Gray bilingual version

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