Cut Off Places

c u t o f f    p l a c e s

edited and curated by
anja høvik strømsted

c o  -  e d i to r

andreas vermehren holm
assistant curater
karley knight
book design
maria seipel
cover image
emir özşahin
magikon forlag in
cooperation with
cut off places books

c o n t e n t s 2

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contents 3

(  t r a n s l at e d b y r i c h a r d z e n i t h  ) manuel de freitas 4
(  t r a n s l at e d b y r o s m a r i e wa l d r o p  ) ana cabaleriro 8
(  t r a n s l at e d b y j o h n i r o n s  ) rosmarie waldrop 16
1 8
q w o  -  l i d r i s k i l l 2 4
3 0
emir özşahin 3 6
emmanuel hocquard 42
sigurd grünberger 44
anja høvik strømsted 52
gui mohallem 58
regan good 6 4
70
lisa m. robinson 76
8 0
mona høvring 8 8
changer 92
stuart krimko 98
eliot lee hazel 10 2
alta ifland 11 2
jasmin hurst 11 8
niall campbell 1 2 4
karl erik brøndbo
monica aasprong 13 0
13 6
c h r i s t o p h e r s a n d  -  i v e r s e n 1 4 2
15 0
vonani bila 1 5 6
jasmin hurst &
anja høvik strømsted
stinne storm
anja teske
jen bervin
natasja maria fourie

bios 1 6 4

m a n u e l d e f r e i ta s 4

café schiller fado menor

It was all in vain, again. He got used to walking
I was miles away from Amsterdam, under the plane trees, dissipating
if you see what I mean, though I liked hangovers and hazy memories.
the black stripes on the couches, the tarnished The truth is they had little in common.
metal of the lamps, the self-confident step
of the waitress who served the drinks. The first time they met they were
sitting on the same side
Today this woman will enter of a bar but on different ends.
my past. I don’t know her name She wore the most ardent
and don’t care to know it. She smiled at me, red he had ever seen,
or I thought she smiled, while I paid under a brutal gray made
for two decafs, a sparkling water almost excusable by the January cold.
and a Jameson that left me a bad taste, of lovelessness.
I’ll ask her for my change in forgetfulness, They didn’t sleep together right away.
the short-lasting memory of the blouse that squeezed But he had her to thank for a trail
her breasts and conferred on her back of happy sperm in the bed
the unrepeatable impression of a prelude. where he died alone. Stretched out next to
Berkley, Wittgenstein and Spinoza,
I, who am going to die, desired you. the pages of a course he didn’t care for
and that at least didn’t dirty his nights.

Within a few weeks they were walking
hand in hand through the garden
or along the streets near the bar.
Until the day she stopped coming.

Heart on fire, ashes everywhere
– there’s no return from a red like that.

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grimy bits of vinyl all stripped down

It must have been the most-played record: Older man, bald and ungainly,
the Fifth Symphony, conducted seeks someone to screw who can put up with him
by Klemperer. The mornings and believes (occasionally) in the resurrection.
and afternoons promised a better
future, virtuous habits, Has never read books, spits a lot
which I soon forgot. I was already eyeing and snores. Serious matter: not to die alone.
Ana’s tavern,
which filled my bedroom window.
I feared the shadows, silence,
feeling in each footstep the monster
inside me. And I read, so as not to think,
discredited French writers.

I loved it so much that one day
I grabbed the record and broke it
to bits – tiny bits of vinyl –
so that they’d hurt even more.
I’m not sure why, but I kept
the stiff cardboard jacket,
that lugubrious allegory of childhood.
And the remains of the record ended up
in the stream next to my parents’ house.

Later on the stream, flanked by weekend
vegetable patches, was strangled by an implacable
housing development, the provincial version
of a gated condominium, in a world
with ever more doors.
As for Beethoven, buried like the frogs
by invisible killing hands,
he almost ceased to move me.

What moves me now, years
later, is to realize I did to that record
the same thing I do over and over
to the bodies I think I love:

I shatter them, very slowly, so that
they’ll keep on hurting a little more.

m a n u e l d e f r e i ta s 6

pompe inutili The dead are frightfully real.
A whole life is insufficient
    for Silvina Rodrigues Lopes for us to kill them all, one
by one, as the most basic metaphysical
Nobody’s born; it would make no sense hygiene would surely recommend.
to call the placental remains And yet they give us the necessary strength
enveloping a bunch of organs to die more and more, to endure
whose action is all but predetermined our rented days, these homes not quite fit
somebody. to live in. Because the truth is that other
people are merely the imperfect dead.
Only the dead truly They, like us, are a bit too alive.
exist. They wrote or didn’t
write books, love letters, But perhaps they’ll one day write
diaries. No matter: they crossed a poem like this (and it might not even be
our paths, sometimes sat a poem, let alone like this) which denotes,
at the same table, and even believed besides the obvious influences, what we might
in the sweet torture of love. call a penchant for horror.
They had real hands when they touched For that’s what it all comes down to.
the pubescent face they were saying farewell to.
A kiss, though it kissed only wrinkles, The dead know.
was able to make the mornings less cold. Knowledge is useless.
Poetry too.
The dead aren’t very good at farewells,
even if they’re precise and sincere
as never before in the moment they descend
into the earth and won’t let us
partake with them a cigarette,
one last drink, a species of destiny.

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becherovka

Norwegian, tall, dubiously
dark-haired and forever smiling.
She begged me not to be
sad, as truly I was.
And I think she paid for my last drink
before asking me “what I do”.

Writing, about death, isn’t
exactly a profession.
But that’s what I answered,
while on some napkin or other
I summed up, just for her, my “work”.

I’ll never know if she made out what I scrawled,
if she bought my books, if she heard
what in my dreadful French I tried
to tell her that night, hopelessly lost.

Nearly every poem is this: an inexcusable
way of saying we didn’t touch
the body that for once in our life was so close
and that didn’t even leave us a fleeting name.

a n a c a b a l e i r o 8

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a n a c a b a l e i r o 10

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a n a c a b a l e i r o 12

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a n a c a b a l e i r o 14

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r o s m a r i e wa l d r o p 16

usage the radicals

Five years, four months and three days ago he gave me Placed at the hub of language, they draw sap from ground
excellent cups three. Note the difference between “cups and ancestors to nourish the signs placed on sheets of paper,
three” and English “three cups,” mirror image reversing matching matter to manner. Complete unto itself, its soul
time’s arrow. Thinking admits of turns as of degrees but can vibrating to one single sound, China turned her back on
degenerate to a hum which is less even than remembering. the world during the 15th century. Alas for the vertigo of
The correct way of saying “less than” is “not to arrive at.” encounter, alas for our variants of causality, for we too are
A huge Western industry sprang up importing tea from in this world if under blankets of heavy snow. There are 214
halfway across the world, and for almost two centuries no roots in the Chinese language as against 240 species of the
one knew how it was grown or prepared. The-he-bought theaceae family, of which only the bushy and rangy types make
things, cf. “the never-to-be-forgotten day,” were not ten the best tea. See camellia sinensis. The radicals form part of
thousand perfections. It is an essential of good manners to every character. They are arranged according to the number
ask a person’s honorable name and age: my unworthy name of strokes and speed of thought.
is Chang, I have failed in business and wish to wash my feet.

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the characters

A new character is often an old radical with a phonetic je ne
regrette rien. While Europeans use the telescope to propagate
their religion, the Chinese consider wisdom a combination
of wind and lightning. The realities of life at sea and the
unknown nature of the lands the Western explorers visited
created a new, sceptical race of men that followed the rules
of expediency. But what happens when the man is always
upright, and the woman always sitting, with bound feet? The
nerve cells never come to rest, showing that repose is not
essential for basic nervous functions. Yet in a world without
elsewhere, like ours, would Marco Polo leave Venice or sit in
a well and look at the sky? Or study languages?

q wo  -  l i d r i s k i l l 18

tal’-s-go gal’-quo-gi di-del’-qua-s-do-di tsa-la-gi di-go-whe-li - beginning cherokee
    I-gv-yi-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-sgo-hni-ho-’i - First Cherokee Lesso: Mourning

       Find a flint blade
      Use your teeth as a whetstone

      Cut your hair
      Talk to shadows and crows

      Cry your red throat raw

       Learn to translate the words you miss most:
      dust      love      poetry

      Learn to say     h ome

    My cracked earth lips     I crawl through a field of
    drip words not sung     twisted bodies to find them
    as lullabies to my infant ears    I do everything Beginning Cherokee
    not laughed over dinner    tells me
    or choked on in despair    Train my tongue
   No    to lie still
   Keep teeth tight
    They played dead until    against lips
   the soldiers passed     Listen to instruction tapes
    covered the fields like corpses     Study flash cards
    and escaped into the mountains
   When it’s safe we’ll find you     How can I greet my ancestors in a language they
   they promised    don’t understand
    But we were already gone
   before sunrise     My tear ducts fill with milk
    because what I most love
    was lost at birth

    My blood roars skin to blisters
    weeps haunted calls of owls
   bones splinter
   jut through skin
    until all of me
   is wounded
   as this tongue

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Ta-li-ne-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-ni-s-gi-li - Second Cherokee Lesson: Ghosts

      Leave your hair
      at the foot of your bed

      Scratch your tongue
       with a cricket’s claw to speak again

      Stop the blood with cornmeal

       Your ancestors will surround you as you sleep
      keep away ghosts of generals presidents   priests
      who hunger for your
      rare and tender tongue

      They will keep away ghosts
      so you have strength
      to battle the living

    Stories float through lives
    with an owl’s sudden swooping
   I knew some Cherokee
    when I was little
    My cousins taught me
    My mother watches it all happen again
    sees ghosts rush at our throats
    with talons drawn like bayonets
   When I came home speaking
    your grandmother told me
    I forbid you to speak that language
   in my house
   Learn something useful
   
    We sit at the kitchen table
    As she drinks iced tea
    in the middle of winter
    I teach her to say u-ga-lo-ga-go-tlv-tv-nv/ tea
    across plastic buckets of generic peanut butter
    wonder bread diet coke
    Try to teach her something useful

    I am haunted by loss
    My stomach is a knot of serpents
    and my hair grows out
   as owl feathers

q wo  -  l i d r i s k i l l 20

Tso-i-ne-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-nv-da-di-s-di - Third Cherokee Lesson: Memory

      Raid archeologists’ camps    She remembers
      and steal shovels       Great Grandmother Rebekah Harmon
      to rebury the dead       who heard white women
      call her uppity Indian during
      Gather stories like harvest       a quilting bee
      and sing honor songs       and climbed down their chimney with
      a knife between her teeth
      Save the seeds
      to carry you through the winter    She remembers
       flour sack dresses
       Bury them deep in your flesh       tar paper shacks
      dust storms  blood  escape
      Weep into your palms
      until stories take root     She carries fire on her back
      in your bones     My fingers work swiftly as spiders
      split skin     and the words that beat in my throat
      blossom     are dragonflies

    There are stories caught     She passes stories down to me
    in my mother’s hair     I pass words up to her
    I can’t bear the weight of    Braid her hair

    Could you give me a braid     It’s what she doesn’t say
    straight down the middle     that could destroy me
    of my back just the way I like     what she can’t say
    So I part her black-going-silver hair    She weeps milk
   into three strands
    thick as our history
    radiant as crow wings

    This is what it means to be Indian
    Begging for stories in a living room
    stacked high with newspapers magazines baby toys

   Mama   story me

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Nv-gi-ne-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: U-de-nv - Fourth Cherokee Lesson: Birth

      Gather riverbank clay
      to make a bowl

      Fill it with hot tears

      Strap it to your back
      with spider silk

       Keep your flint knife close
      to ward off death
      and slice through umbilical cords

      Be prepared for blood

    Born without a womb
    I wait for the crown of fire
    the point where further stretching is impossible
    This birth could split me
    I nudge each syllable into movement
   Memorize their smells
    Listen to their strange sleepy sounds
    They shriek with hunger and loss
    I hold them to my chest and weep milk
    My breasts are filled with tears

    I wrap my hair around their small bodies
    a river of owl feathers

   See they whisper We found you
     We made a promise

    This time we’ll be more careful
    Not lose each other in
    the chaos of slaughter

    We are together at sunrise
    from dust we sprout love and poetry
   We are home
   Greeting our ancestors
    with rare and tender tongues

q wo l i  -  d r i s k i l l 22

nothing like a love sonnet for greeley, colorado or
something like a love poem for greeley queers, 1993-1998

When I escaped, I smuggled the color of lilacs—
the only sweet fragrance for miles—and the bruised and brutal
work as we hunkered down for the next attack.
We honed an insurgent mercy, dislodged gravel
from mangled heartbreak with our love gnarling
deep in my stomach. I can’t forget the stench
of methane. Maybe we don’t recover. Like a starling
poisoned by Avitrol we always wonder Who they will lynch
next? Who snarls in the cab of that truck? What does he crave?
I wish I could write this fear away, rigid
as a knife’s edge along memory’s throat. Greeley, you left a concave
trench in my marrow, left my heart plaited
with lilacs and broken glass slicing membrane.
A labor of setting bones. The bloodstain.

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birthday poem for billie rain for michael

because the galaxy hums chest hold beard cheek kiss
i spin towards you as light hot touch skim lip bliss
love like a sprout heal raw melt thank heart
lace roots of a tree that holds us laugh sweat soft face miss
incandescent inside the emerald memory of
everything

repair our ancestors tell us
ablaze with our oldest songs
insistent voices to remind us that we are
nothing without them    without each other

e m i r ö z ş a h i n 24

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e m i r ö z ş a h i n 26

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e m i r ö z ş a h i n 28

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e m m a n u e l h o c q u a r d 30

a test of solitude       xv

      ii The rule says to see is an active verb.
I change the rule and say to see is a stative verb
October. Return of the robins. What’s in front of ( expressing state or change of state ).
my eyes. Which is obvious when one thinks about it.
Viviane is Viviane. Alone, evident. I see a leaf. I pick up a leaf.
To tell you that I’ve seen her. The two sentences are not equivalent.
How I’ve seen her, having only this name to go I draw a leaf is something else again.
on. Giacometti sees a dog. The dog that he sees on
To show you that my eyes this particular day.
I’ve seen her. He says: “I am this dog.”
Viviane is Viviane. He makes a sculpture of this dog. Selfportrait.
That is to say I construct a solitude. I see Viviane.
It’s you I’m thinking of. Viviane is Viviane.
Unique smile. I write the sonnets of Viviane.
I’m telling you of my smile.
Her mouth.

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      sunday 16 november

Table burning in the dead angle. Its name is dark
faces. I’ll subject the unexpected and inconceiv-
able to mathematical formulas. Life could be this
way. Stopped the music lesson, though. No, I
say, there may be quite different reasons.
Perhaps even an unanswerable question. The
object of my flame? I see the stump burning in
the dead angle. In the rain. The messenger of
bread, overwhelmed by sleep. It is daybreak.
Yes, her presence is persistent. Like the noise of
a machine. Open your hands in order to sleep.
What is the matter? Oh. The noise. The wasps.
The water. The yellow clover. The pale sea. A
walk in white espadrilles.

e m m a n u e l h o c q u a r d 32

      xxiii

There is the canale, there is the burnt stump.
To pose the question of how to go from one to
the other is to suppose that one can do it.
And to suppose this is to posit the rule that there
is only one space.
That to go from one point to another point one
follows a line across one single space.
This is how sentences connect in order to tell a
story.
Walking in my mind between the canale and the
burnt stump, I find myself in that part of space
for which the word is missing.
The walker I am constructs a space made of at
least three pieces of different character.

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      xxxi

People can as it were come into being through their
name
is a sentence.
What name to give to the space between the
canale and the burnt stump,
a question.
The missing word is this name,
an answer.
This name the missing word.
Look at the missing word is this name as a
tautology.
A tautology is not a sentence.
Is utterance par excellence.
An utterance is not a sentence.

e m m a n u e l h o c q u a r d 34

( book ii )        iii    

      ii     Viviane is Viviane, yes.
Tautology does not say all but yes.
What empties a name of its substance. Yes and all are not equivalents. Every yes fills
What kind of grammar would a grammar with- the space of language, which for all that does not
out questions be form a whole.
and what are the questions about. One would not obtain a sum by adding up these
You are not a question, but surrounded by kinds yeses.
of questions. What if we subtracted all from our vocabulary.
It is snowing how do wolves howl. Those wolves do not sing in chorus.
Yes, Viviane. The space filled by their scraps of voices is a
Not answering any question broken space.
could one say that yes and to be are one. Heaps of little spaces in juxtaposition
Now yes. sing
“I felt I understood.” around the points.
Yes
could be the missing word.

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       iv        xiv

To describe where I write to you, turning my I am telling you of this silence.
back on my books, facing the computer. Finger on the index, the rings. The cut.
My writing table. My reading table under the This black mark in the space delineates the
window. Two table. Lamp seven. architecture of the landscape.
The window looks out on the stone wall on the On these too mild winter mornings the fish, red
other side of the impasse ( the myth of the cave ) shading into green, put in timid appearances,
which reflects the light of the afternoon sun into and Pierre says that the penguins’ territory is
the room with the singing wolves. their song two by two to find each other amid
On my left, this light. In my right, my library of the crowd.
American poetry. A period of silence. A long period where
The books nearest me are detective novels and division begins.
videos. I am telling you of my silence and of the pain of
On the right the files where I get lost. objects.
The screen before me. I tell of this solitude.

s i g u r d g r ü n b e r g e r 36

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s i g u r d g r ü n b e r g e r 38

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s i g u r d g r ü n b e r g e r 40

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a n j a h ø v i k s t r ø m s t e d   42

jiko

will you come and see the wild swine. i’ve caught the fat
chunky swine that lurked around. the swine killed piglets for
weeks. it lurked around in the nights. it lurked around and
stole piglets while everybody went to church. i don’t go to
church. i looked the wild swine in the eyes and caught the
wild swine with a rope. will you come and see the wild swine
in the eyes. the wild swine is called jiko. it’s hard to shoot a
named swine. jiko killed piglets. that’s the mistake it made.
i’ll pull the rifle. put the cheek on the stock. i’ll take aim. will
you see the wild swine nobody’s going to miss.

brown

will you come and see brown locked behind bars. i’ve caught
the beast brown. i looked him in the eyes and caught him
with a rope. i pulled him through the mud. the same dirt.
the same big mouth. will you see brown. will you see the fat
beast. i’ve hated brown. will you see brown locked behind
bars.

joost

in prison they throw the food bowl at joost, dry bread. will
you help joost. joost was drunk and swayed the shotgun.
now he’ll rot in jail. people say it’s the best for the kids. but
i’ll set joost free. i’ll set him free when everyone’s in church.
nobody’s going to miss him. everybody will hate me. will
you come and hate me. everybody think i’ll rot in jail. but i’ll
sway the shotgun. will you come and hate me swaying the
shotgun.

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uma

will you come and steel piglets for uma when everyone’s
in church. will you give uma gifts. will you come and get
uma her legacies back when everyone’s in church. will you
come and have dinner with uma. will you come and have
dinner with me. will you help me bury jiko. will you come
dig a grave. i stand in soil up to my knees. will you come
and get gin and chickens. i’ve stolen piglets for joost in
broad daylight. that’s the mistake i made. because i don’t
know when everyone’s in church. will you come and put me
behind bars. will you steel piglets.

mosa

i’ll take mosa. i’ll catch mosa. i’ll throw a rope around the
fat pot. mosa has dirt in the big mouth. that’s the fault with
mosa. i’m not afraid of mosa. i’ll catch her and look her
in the eyes. mosa has dirt in the big mouth. that’s how i
recognize a wild swine. mosa has dirt under the fingernails.
sleeps with her eyes wide open. mosa never learn. will you
come and take mosa. i’ll drive mosa away with the truck. i’ll
force her out of town. mosa forced lulu out of town. mosa
has dirt in her mouth. will you come and take mosa.

g u i m o h a l l e m 44

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g u i m o h a l l e m 46

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g u i m o h a l l e m 48

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g u i m o h a l l e m 50