(JANUARY) by Hanna Riisager trans. Kristina Andersson Bicher
I see the subject all
the time in front of me, see all these
small rituals.
How it lies on the sofa and waits
for me to come.
The wind pushes moirés of ice and snow
against the windowpane. An undulating, pearl gray surface –
silk bark.
My brain’s pale tissues
unfold in the room in a billowing mass.
I’m floating under the roof, looking down.
The subject stays on the sofa. Smoothed
waxed, with a distilled stiffness
in the facial musculature.
I smile. Hug
the clots of the heart, my dark charms.
Kristina Andersson Bicher is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her work has been published in AGNI, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Brooklyn Rail, Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Plume, Narrative, and others. She is author of the poetry collection She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (MadHat Press 2020) and Just Now Alive (FLP 2014), as well as a translation of Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s I Walk Around Gathering Up My Garden for the Night (Bitter Oleander Press 2020).
