Size / / /

Content warning:



Written by Estíbaliz Espinosa and translated by Lawrence Schimel. Read the original in Galician.

if you open an apple

if you split its heart in half

with a crisp slice

one of those that give off a scent

a deep red scent among a chlorophyll

silence

 

if you open an apple like that between your

primate hands

those hands which I don't know and yet adore

 

if you | cut the | apple along | its imaginary | apple axis

its apple equator /split in twain/

in the introverted air above the head of a dozing Newton

of a son of William Tell with a foreboding

if you open the apple of Turing

the stepmother apple

the bitten apple with a rainbow sweater

 

if you open the apples that are more apple than all apples

and all the apples of the world

acidic and nucleic

the camoesas I never tried

that apple of Paris turned into an Hesperides

that mad young man with women's clothing

cross-dressed apple

with teethmarks and a drupe fruitful

to voracity

 

if you do this

 

if you do this

 

stick your tongue into the five pointed star that surrounds the poem

la pomme

la pomme fatale

star-shaped seedbed

cyanide seeds

 

blue acid that weakens cellular ties

 

stick your tongue into what nobody dares

stick your tongue until it hurts into the end of the flowering apple

 

crash with your tongue against the seed of the abyss

that is to say

break into speech

 

break into speech flooding live what was once dark

in the explosive center of a fetal fruit made into light

 

your tongue

toward the supernatural

 

from curiosidade, 2015



Estíbaliz Espinosa (A Coruña, Spain): writer. Musician. Philologist and sociologist. Dilettante astronomer. Her poetic work emerges from her curiosity about literature and science (linguistics, puns, maths, astrophysics or biology), and from her search for new approaches to content, on paper or screen She also writes—in Galician and Spanish—short stories and articles; she runs workshops and musical readings. Her most recent poetry book is Curiosidade.
Current Issue
16 Dec 2024

Across the train tracks from BWI station, a portal shimmered in the shade of a patch of tall trees. From her seat on a northbound train taking on passengers, Dottie watched a woman slip a note out of her pocket, place it under a rock, strip off her work uniform, then walk naked, smiling, into the portal.
exposing to the bone just how different we are
a body protesting thinks itself as a door out of a darkroom, a bullet, too.
In this episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li to discuss her foray into poetry, screenwriting, music composition and more, and also presents a reading of her two poems published in 2022, 'Ave Maria' and 'The Mezzanine'.
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Load More