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.
Then came the odors.
The badly installed roots.
As corpus delicti.
On the operating-table.
He tries to come, in vain.
He jerks me off
as if I were a tired
personal object. I imagine
the rest.
To be a sad empty vase
to be a withered flowergirl in a vase
to be a tiny microphone
to be a crawl upon a shoulder
When I was beautiful with hate and around-around / When
I was beautiful with hate and the implanted heart of the Snowqueen and I still
wasn't absolutely his / When I was beautiful with joy and around-around
Yet she never laid an eye on me ever.
Her place is in a peep show
Where she’d enjoy the sight
alone without stakes.
He sticks to her body,
pulls his weight to her, in his body,
He’s tense inside her. He sticks to her.
How many women!
How much time you’ve been given.
How many borrowed charms have been shattered around.
Act natural. Thrift shop for used clothes
by the pound. The colored smell
of poverty is leading the way
She seemed fidgety
they said
when she was first revivified.
Did she want that I wonder.
Should I presume mine inside it?
Or does it reflect its soul onto me?
Can it be otherwise? Who knows.
(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.
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