Gabor G Gyukics
Gabor G Gyukics (b. 1958) is a Hungarian-American poet, jazz poet, literary translator born in Budapest. He is the author of 11 books of original poetry, 6 in Hungarian, 2 in English, 1 in Arabic, 1 in Bulgarian, 1 in Czech and 16 books of translations including A Transparent Lion, selected poetry of Attila József and Swimming in the Ground: Contemporary Hungarian Poetry (in English, both with co-translator Michael Castro) and an anthology of North American Indigenous poets in Hungarian titled Medvefelhő a város felett. He writes his poems in English (which is his second language) and Hungarian. His latest book in English is a hermit has no plural (Singing Bone Press, 2015). His latest book in Hungarian was published by Lector Press in May 2018. Photo by Sándor Gyapjas.
(This isn’t a poem.
it’s a Scream, Scream, Scream.
Which now is a murderous trap
once that was his foremost impulse,
collapsed like laid
out playing cards.
I take pleasure in seeing how cities disappear,
how streets, parks, names get deleted, how
my denial washes even the holiest gardens away.
I mock the mountains: Can you see?
What tiny mounds you all are, if I want you to be so.
Since the war began,
nothing tastes the same,
neither my mother’s soup,
nor my granny’s sponge cake,
but the taste of snow didn’t change at all.
Your trip, your sped up present
escape to a certain future
followed by white lines
road signs, that are not important now
Then he squeezed milk from it, but it was already too cold,
and the kids didn’t want any,
Yet it would have been more
than stuffing peppers
with darkness and meat.
they ask if I have anything to eat
then I invite them to the woods again
they say it’s awkward for them
but they will do it if I want to
How much unthinkable evil pushes suddenly in to the
heated rooms. To the rigid impotence of shoulders and neck
there is irritated angry mood in every motion, in this pretty
voiced bird, that can hide under a single green leaf
Open your window,
throw your ennui out,
which consumes itself
through the depths of your house
a statue is watching people strolling
scattering the birds from his head
thinking of the man who locked him in stone
you cozy up to anyone
stepping off a freight train
with a patch above their hearts
crowed of ants hide in their undergrounds lairs
their red wrinkled slave driver armies
are not marching to gain power
just yet
