They Will Sew the Blue Sail

Merovingians Suffer Injustice | Tomaž Šalamun
Translation from the Slovenian by Michael Thomas Tare & the Author

O you, brandishing your whip into my

heart, brandishing your whip into

jazz. With my hand I pass over your

ear and your neck, into the dune.

The flat-foot eats small leaves of grass,

and pulls them apart.

Giants were hiding behind bricks.

I’m glued together out of

a belly, pieces of meat and soul.

I’m cute. When a nothing,

a steamboat, picks up a jacket,

it doesn’t exist. Your

mouth? My mouth? The sun needs

a cave to shove off.