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Revista Pessoa

Three Poems by Salgado Maranhão

By Salgado Maranhão

Translated by Alexis Levitin

The Unsettled Sound of the Landscape

By Itamar Vieira Junior

The wind was strong, and the clothes hanging all along the barbed wire fence began to fall. From the doorway, she saw the violent path of the leaves and the dirt swept along the ground. They ran, returned,…

Translated by Tiffany M. Higgins

The Bad Gardener

By Evando Nascimento

Il y a des natures purement contemplatives et tout à fait impropres à l’action, qui cependant, sous une impulsion mystérieuse et inconnue, agissent quelquefois avec une rapidité…

Translated by Gitanjali Patel

An Elemental Man

By Lucílio Manjate

The man stood for hours before the tiny stone, gazing at nothing, much less the aforementioned stone. Finally, his lips opened like a clam, and out came a baritone voice. Atop the rows of acácias,…

Translated by Eric M. B. Becker

Shadow and Light: Three Poems

By João Luís Barreto Guimarães

18ème arrondissementTo Nuno JúdiceThesculptors of Montmartre must havestudied anatomy (in depth)to chisel such beauty into theirsacred figures. Orelse wandered around (from brotheltobrothel)…

Translated by Eric M. B. Becker

wild fucking ride: the thin fire. of sappho. in me.

breakfast in house at the top of a hill. on the island of hydra. i spotted her. she was sitting down. her legs crossed. i saw the blonde hairs. she wasn’t wearing underwear. she must have been 50.…

Translated by Rahul Bery

Language

By Ana Martins Marques

1in the beginningevery language is foreignit closes in on your body like on a cityuntil laying siegeit imposes on the body the namesthat language gives itfoot leg stomach teethmakes the tongue call itself…

Translated by Elisa Wouk Almino

Salvation

By Maria Valéria Rezende

Lena hears the slap against Zig Zag’s haunch, he’s leaving! She grabs her daughters, one under each arm, runs out the back door, tosses the two little spitfires into the hammock strung up…

Translated by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren

Three Poems

By Armando Freitas Filho

The following previously unpublished poems by Armando Freitas Filho were selected by Heloisa Jahn for Revista Pessoa.Mario and OswaldTranslated by Flávia RochaSuspicious, gay, a man’s manhis childhood…

Translated by Flávia Rocha & Eric M. B. Becker

My Life as an Intellectual

By Elvira Vigna

In this short crônica, Brazilian writer Elvira Vigna—who just last week was named a finalist for the 2017 Oceanos (former Portugal Telecom) Prize—gives a self-deprecating account of…

Translated by Eric M. B. Becker