Excerpts

Vareda by Sven Mikser

Excerpt from manuscript
ELM 2/2023
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And then it’s over. Karel is home that night. He sees me from the kitchen window and comes to the door, eyes wide with excitement and a...

Poetry by Triin Paja

Burying the River
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Triin Paja (b. 1990) is the author of three Estonian-language poetry collections and a recipient of the Värske Rõhk Poetry Award, the B...

Tõnis Tootsen
Pâté of the Apes

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2023
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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...

Tõnis Vilu
A Gift to the Psychiatrist

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2022
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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 ...

Loone Ots
Love

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2022
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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...

Martin Algus
Something Real

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2020
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Leo We had nothing left.             It had been that way for some time alread...

Poetry by Elo Viiding

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2020
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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...

Poetry by Carolina Pihelgas

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2020
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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...

Mudlum
Polish Boys

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2020
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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...

Jan Kaus
Sublimations

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2020
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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 ...

Silvia Urgas
chrome firefox safari

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2020
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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 ...

Andrus Kivirähk
Oscar and the Things

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2020
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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...

Tõnu Õnnepalu
Acre

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2019
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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...

Poetry by
Andres Allan

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2019
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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 ...

Tiit Aleksejev
Hortus Conclusus

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2019
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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...

Poetry by Betti Alver

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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,...

Poetry by Aare Pilv

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2018
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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...

Vahur Afanasjev
Serafima and Bogdan

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2018
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  Excerpt from the chapter “Deportation”   The widow Glafira’s sauna has been heated. Sitting in the cramped dressing roo...

Rein Raud
Bell and Hammer

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2018
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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...

Poetry by Eeva Park

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2018
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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...

Maarja Kangro
The Glass Child

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2017
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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...

Poetry by Vladislav Koržets

Translated by Adam Cullen
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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...

Silvia Urgas
It´s just about late enough

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2017
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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...

Mihkel Mutt
The Estonian Circumciser

Translated and commented by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2017
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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...

Eda Ahi
Dance lessons with gravity

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2017
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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...

Kelly Turk
Where do little fat girls go?

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2017
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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 ...

Indrek Koff
Stories of a Hundred Nations

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2017
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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 ...

Paavo Matsin
The Gogol Disco

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2017
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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...

Poetry by Veronika Kivisilla

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2016
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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...

Two Captains – Excerpt fromWe All Fall Down

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2016
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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...

Prophecy by Jüri Kolk

Translated by Adam Cullen
ELM 2/2016
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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...

Poetry by Juhan Viiding

Translated by Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov
ELM 1/2016
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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 ...