ISBN 0-9754990-0-9

Blackboards
Poetry by Tomaz Salamun
(translated by Michael Biggins)
Artwork by Metka Krasovec

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$16

Tomaz Salamun, widely recognized as one of the leading Central European poets, is the author of more than thirty collections of poetry, and has had books translated into most of the European languages.

Metka Krasovec is the recipient of Slovenia’s highest awards for painting, the Preseren Foundation Award and the Jakopic Award. She has taken part in nearly 300 exhibitions around the globe.

AFRICA

Sometimes when I shine my shoes, the souls
start to squirt. You have to grow stubble.
The manuals close. The deluge subsides.

And the soul finds no expression at all, since
the current has stopped. Again! Sometimes when I
shine my shoes, the souls start to squirt.

The shoe gleams, not the soul. There’s no end
to these dead flies. They drop and the pump gives a whoop.
And if the sun’s ring shoves into my rattle,

then all the more. I can raise my eyes.
I calm down when I’m furious. I’m prodded
and like a stalagmite. Benin speaks out of

the husks. His cheekbones have hardened. An otter
suits the window. Molasses is for the wound. For souls
converse with each other like electricity.

They endlessly leap at your fingers. And backgammon.
I can see a swamp in triangles. The man in the
hood knows what’s at stake. To guard is to beg.

They’re stuck together and half-erased. A pity
I’ve stopped them. They leak on my hoof. They leak
on my hoof. I’m alluring and lazy.

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