T e e m u H e l l e —

translated by N i i n a P o l l a r i

The Shopping List

Colorful spaghetti to form

romantic movie scenes.

Garlic to prevent the ancient

vampires and their lustful attacks.

A few peppers to symbolize

a wilted heart, into which my nature

locked the smallest seeds of hope.

And fuses just in case,

so the dark doesn’t take you from me –

candles go out if I open the door for you.

A gridded notebook and ballpoint pen

so I can write down

a few things about you

and what you tasted like.

The Office

This is a soul landscape, he thought.

A sleety linoleum floor, walls of snow,

sun occasionally leaping across them.

The AC whistled like a punctured lung.

In a snowdrift stood a rolling cabinet.

Inside it grew the forest of modern man,

a cluster of apartment buildings on a map.

He sat in a work chair, which helped him

move from room to room

unnoticed like the wind.

The coffee cup left behind planets

in a galaxy awakening at the fingertips.

An emboldened mouse gnawed at a meeting pastry.

On the floor, a plastic trash can, a mouse trap,

a supermassive black hole.

Sonnet

This is a way to avoid death!

A group of researchers found a Mediterranean diet

is highly effective at preventing pathos,

at reminding you it’s time to rise from the freezing sea.

Kalamata olives, which you pluck by the shore,

have lived longer than any of us

and nobody knows how they ended up there.

Maybe we’ve fallen from the same tree?

I get drunk from your mouth. In the morning

I wake up alone, horribly hungover,

I’m weak at the sheer thought of you, elsewhere

walking along the salty water

on top of kalamata olives hardened to rocks,

mourning me, the fact that I’m no longer here.

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