MATT TURNER
I’m the author of Wave 9: Collages (Flying Islands, 2020) and Not Moving (Broken Sleep Books, 2019). I am the translator of Weeds, by Lu Xun (Seaweed Salad Editions, 2019), and co-translator (with Weng Haiying) of books by Yan Jun, Hu Jiujiu, Ou Ning, Mi Jialu and others. In addition, essays and reviews can be found in Hyperallergic Weekend, LARB China Channel, Cha, Bookforum, Hong Kong Review of Books, Asian Review of Books and other journals.
At present I live in New York City, where I work as a freelance translator and copyeditor. Prior to that I spent nearly a decade in Beijing, where I taught literature at several universities, where I met my wife, and where I found my dog in front of a McDonald’s.
Here is the poem “Parable,” from Wave 9: Collages.
Parable
the mountains open
with a very wide mouth
back then, thinking
through clarity and
saw it was
made of dried
wax
a still face
––––––––––––
arms and
legs wet
*
fruit
wet on the pavement
and from a similar height
*
basket
treacle
false answers
*
you’ve misheard
how
is?
*
as for
being alive, it’s a
wet sleep of
questions asked to
my hand, grabbing at
a rescue
––––––––––––
out
the door, I
fly up,
like a snake
*
a baby doesn’t come out in
broad daylight
*
would out
day and night
–––––––––––––
fire
and beat me
I intend to kill you
but saying it
what else
*
the bride
said:
a mistake has
become to
go, and to come back
no one had
an idea what that was
*
medicine hates passion
*
cry all night until,
having eaten enough fruit, the
illness is cured at last
a slave
builds up the
eye
we all laughed and
went our way
exactly as foretold
in the Book of Unhappy
Skills
And, from the same manuscript, this is the poem “How Can You Face Them.”
How Can You Face Them
each revolution of the
soul
*
imagine that
everyone you hate has
come, you’re related to
them
but nothing happens
how can you face them
as a
being
on your own
case
would you
turn around
––––––––––––––
the subject here
is a person
maybe not one person really, but
it’s common sense
you’re seeing this, thinking
about it, using the facilities
then
break off
*
get a phone, no not
a phone, a phone call, say
here’s something new
your agent calls you, must be that
*
et cetera
*
over the phone you
say it’s already done
you’re not there in
your not-there
like
––––––––––––––
some debt has been
evaded, an open road
the leaves
roll across the still wind
what normal state
up there, to
find abandonment a mere life
*
oh consolidator!
*
I did baby things
out, deleted
the new life, old
debt on the loan
*
oh consolidator!
*
tenor goes up, up
into my first
life
rattling off some trivia about
my family. Place
and station, et cetera
no annihilation
no eternity
came in sleep and stayed
–––––––––––––
therapy today
*
we’ve got to
connect with each other or
we’re just two topics
*
“I,” “mine”
should appear to my dreams
as predicates
but Being is not one
a predicate, I mean
at least it’s two of them
*
a perfect
account of what I
never accomplished
*
a new note
who hears it
sound
in the inner ear
interring itself
*
these appear to
be like pairs: no, yes
if, not always