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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...
Excerpts
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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...
•••
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...
•••
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 ...
•••
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...
•••
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...
•••
p. 12
ON SPACES
Sometimes it seems like everything begins with departures. That not distances, but spaces, are what matters. Thei...
•••
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...
•••
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 ...
•••
I could recounthow curacao’s longest bridge is called“our swinging old lady”and passing over the bayyou sure don’t surpass yourselfbut ...
•••
“Hello, balloon!” Oscar spoke into his mobile. “Can you hear me?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” a somewhat nasally voice immediately replied. “I’m...
•••
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...
•••
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...
•••
Peeling seconds
my coat and boots
are left dancing hollowly
when drunks sway on the highways
and the woods have dried up
...
•••
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...
•••
(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...
•••
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...
•••
(Verb, 2018)
Obolon
Obolon’s raspberries.
...
•••
The Star-Bright Hour
The wind won’t ask: to what did life amount?
To yourself you’ll render your own account.
However long,...
•••
*
in the clear winter night there’s
one window still light,
behind it
a grown man curses his
slow computer.
that man is me...
•••
Excerpt from the chapter “Deportation”
The widow Glafira’s sauna has been heated. Sitting in the cramped dressing roo...
•••
I went to visit the world.
How it smelt,
how it moved and hummed!
The blood stirred in my arm – svelte,
vein...
•••
Undivere Manor, North-Central Estonia. 1979.
Arno was left alone in the lounge of the sauna house. I suppose I should...
•••
*
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...
•••
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...
•••
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...
•••
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...
•••
With Mihkel Mutt’s (1953) first novel since his hefty work The Cavemen Chronicle (2012), the unparalleled master of Estonian irony has emerg...
•••
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...
•••
where do little
fat girls go
when insulted
beneath clotheslines
behind a house
to practice
to practice a speech
for
getting back at
...
•••
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...
•••
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
...
•••
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 ...
•••
Cutlets for Gogol
Katerina had been crying over Grigory’s disappearance the entire day, alone downstairs. She finally pulled herself togeth...
•••
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...
•••
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...
•••
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...
•••
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 ...