100 Refutations: Day 27

Untitled

THEY: It’s the humid the bleak season
YOU: A new spring
THEY: The empty desert of life
YOU: A smiling flower bed
THEY: The secret the lie
YOU: The message the truth
THEY: The asphyxiation the prison bars
YOU: The oxygen the pure air
THEY: The iron of hate
YOU: The gold of love
THEY: The sword
YOU: A dove
THEY: The rage
YOU: A smile
THEY: The slap
YOU: A kiss
THEY: The night
YOU: A star
THEY: A splinter
YOU: A scarf
THEY: It is nothing nothing nothing
YOU: Everything everything everything

Bios

Serge Saint-Jean

The identity of Serge St. Jean is unknown. This poem was previously published in Collection Hounguénikon and later anthologized in Ayiti Cheri: Poésie Haïtienne (1800-2015).

Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. and Addie Leak

Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. earned MFAs in creative nonfiction writing and literary translation from The University of Iowa. She is the author of Drown Sever Sing from Anomalous Press and Don’t Come Back from Mad River Books, as well as editor, with Sarah Viren, of the forthcoming anthology Essaying the Americas. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation work has been featured in journals including  Bellingham ReviewChicago ReviewFourth GenreBrevityPoets & Writers, and The Sunday Rumpus, among others. She won Best of the Net and Iron Horse Review’s Discovered Voices Award, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and is a Rona Jaffe fellow. She moved from Colombia to China to Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia, where she works as an assistant professor for Virginia Commonwealth University. Visit www.linawritesessays.com.

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Addie Leak (French editor) is a freelance translator and editor currently living in Amman, Jordan. She holds an MFA in literary translation from The University of Iowa and has published translations from French, Spanish, and Arabic in various literary journals as well as in Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics, edited by Olivia Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio. She also coordinated the creation and publication of Lanterns of Hope: A Poetry Project for Iraqi Youth, a 2016 collaboration between The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and the US Embassy in Baghdad.

English translation copyright (c) Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., 2018.