Translation

THEMES

• Death

• Historical wrong

QUOTES

• “The soil frayed and sifted evens the score”

• “There are women here from every county,/ Just as there were in the laundry”

• “White light blinded and bleached out”

• “Where steamed danced/ Around stone drains and giggled and slipped across water”

• “Searching for their parents, their names,/ The edges of words grinding against nature,”

• “As if, when water sank between the rotten teeth/ Of soap, and every grasp seemed melted, one voice/ Had begun, rising above the shuffle and hum”

• “Until every pocket in her skull blared with the note — / Allow us now to hear it, sharp as an infant’s cry”

• “Washed clean of idiom. The baked crust/ Of words that made my temporary name. A parasite that grew in me. That spell/ Lifted. I lie in earth sifted to dust. Let the bunched keys I bore slacken and fall. I rise and forget. A cloud over my time”