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Winter
To Sandra
To live a winter,
your roots must rest
and the water freeze in your core.
Stay motionless, white, a...
Excerpts
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pp. 14–18
II
I just wrote about Undo and Redo at considerable length, but barely added a word about Mom and Dad. As someone wro...
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pp. 51–56
Am I, after the whole course of treatment, a
better person now? I’ve screwed up an unbelievable amount
of shit over ...
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5:07 a.m.SALME
The snow has compacted into dense drifts. I have to lift my short legs high with every step and bring them down with full...
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Leo
We had nothing left.
It had been that way for some time alread...
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maidens shipwrecks final judgement dayshave been no strangers the last thirty yearsI was one of those jacks of all trades toopart alcoholic...
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From the collection Just About Love
Girls’ toys
These girls have no mothers;the mothers are with the boys.With the brothers who can n...
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p. 12
ON SPACES
Sometimes it seems like everything begins with departures. That not distances, but spaces, are what matters. Thei...
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Man has the mind of an animal. Inside, he fails spectacularly to draw a line between a little fun and the misery of lifelong rearing and re...
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There lived a man who was in the habit of saying: “Be what may, but may there be order at home!” The man believed that people were created ...
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I could recounthow curacao’s longest bridge is called“our swinging old lady”and passing over the bayyou sure don’t surpass yourselfbut ...
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“Hello, balloon!” Oscar spoke into his mobile. “Can you hear me?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” a somewhat nasally voice immediately replied. “I’m...
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WEEK ONE. DAY ONE.May 27, 1949When Aunt Mari (as she was called by some of her younger Estonian colleagues) was approaching the maternity w...
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I realized I was
very far from home on the very first morning there, in a suburb of Toronto,
when I woke up (which had happened several tim...
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Peeling seconds
my coat and boots
are left dancing hollowly
when drunks sway on the highways
and the woods have dried up
...
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This time Marius moved with utmost care and memorised exactly where he’d come from. He no longer had any intention of dozing off or meeting...
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(Tuum, 2018)
OH SUN OH LIGHT OH DUST
I
this could be rum’s dialogue and quotation marks
but that woman I saw in the woods yeste...
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We attack from three sides at once. From the south where the moat is now the shallowest and it’s possible to nudge the siege tower up to th...
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(Verb, 2018)
Obolon
Obolon’s raspberries.
...
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The Star-Bright Hour
The wind won’t ask: to what did life amount?
To yourself you’ll render your own account.
However long,...
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*
in the clear winter night there’s
one window still light,
behind it
a grown man curses his
slow computer.
that man is me...
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Excerpt from the chapter “Deportation”
The widow Glafira’s sauna has been heated. Sitting in the cramped dressing roo...
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I went to visit the world.
How it smelt,
how it moved and hummed!
The blood stirred in my arm – svelte,
vein...
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Undivere Manor, North-Central Estonia. 1979.
Arno was left alone in the lounge of the sauna house. I suppose I should...
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*
It wasn't I who made you this way
said Darwin,
the divine intuitive care of genetics opted
to give you light hair and a dark l...
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Wednesday, January 28th, 2015, ~3:00 PM
My throat hurt and felt swollen. At first, I thought I’d caught a cold from the open wi...
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Cycle
The night before last Wednesday,
my pup died of infection,
and was laid to rest out back
until the resurrection.
He won’t be poki...
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it’s just about late enough that the clock hands show
you’re-a dope-for-caring-
but-time-for-us-to-have-one-more-drink-now
and some guy i...
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With Mihkel Mutt’s (1953) first novel since his hefty work The Cavemen Chronicle (2012), the unparalleled master of Estonian irony has emerg...
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they dance with you, gravity, everyone.
but only the brave know the steps they should take.
you’ve got that cruel but equalizing trait:
b...
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where do little
fat girls go
when insulted
beneath clotheslines
behind a house
to practice
to practice a speech
for
getting back at
...
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an old man wearing
a cotton-padded coat
rubber boots
just stopped before me and said he sees my opening
I was upset
doubtless means som...
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one time in grade school
the topic of reading class was
fairy tales redone by Disney
(that’s not quite how we classified it back then
...
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A fairy tale about warm light.
A fairy tale about the hundred faces of loneliness.
A reflective fairy tale about your life.
A fairy tale ...
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Cutlets for Gogol
Katerina had been crying over Grigory’s disappearance the entire day, alone downstairs. She finally pulled herself togeth...
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Too nice a drunk
locking up my bike in front of the store
a babbling drunk approached me
I wanted to withdraw
but he said
listen
you...
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1960
They meet up at Tiina’s house after school. Tiina puts her bag in her room and follows Vova, because he wants to show her his turtle...
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An oracle proclaimed to a Theban king
that he would live a long and happy life —
not one younger kinsman would slay him.
We would never h...
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SIMPLE POEM
happiness once came into the yard
and the yard was ever so happy
then happiness came into the room
and the room was ever so ...