~
He would
in case of divorce
lay claim to half
of everything
he said.
Half a sofa,
half a TV, . . .
—From "Divorce 1," a poem by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, The Paris Review, Issue 238 (Winter 2021). This poem will be included in There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a collection of poetry by Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Smith and Russell, with a foreword by Olga Ravn), which is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux on March 11, 2025.
I couldn't shake what Mum had said about forgiving myself, and even though I'd bought a new dress and had enjoyed so much prosecco that I was drunk by ten o'clock, I checked my phone constantly, I was on it all night long. Not one message came through to tell me how things had gone, the operation should have been over and done with hours earlier. I knew that Mum was punishing me, but still my palms felt clammy, I tried calling her but she wouldn't pick up, and I felt certain that something had gone wrong after all, that they hadn't had a chance to call me, that there was no signal wherever they were, I went outside and tried calling from there, stood on the pavement not far from my friends, who were smoking, and felt as if the ground was collapsing beneath my feet, and I stood there, drunk, sobbing, Mum not picking up, until eventually I hung up.
—From Grown Ups, a novel by Marie Aubert, translated from the Norwegian by Rosie Hedger (Pushkin Press, 2021). This segment is from page 33 of the paperback.
as though both trying
to hide and begging
to be seen.
—From "Something Like We Did II," one of three poems by Tim Seibles, Poetry (September 2023).
All the benches in the Jardín facing the pink spikes and spires of the Parroquia are already taken by lovers of the morning sun, but you find one set back under the meticulously trimmed and shaped trees you are told are Indian laurels, where you can sit making your way at leisure through the Spanish-language newspapers you have bought from the vendor who spreads out a variety of them on the low wall that surrounds the Jardín. . . . Then becoming aware, without wanting to, of a woman seated on a bench across from you, dressed in a flamboyant Mexican style that few Mexican women assume at any other than festive occasions: skirt upon skirt of cotton and tulle in indigo, lime, crimson and saffron, her arms spread over the back of the bench festooned with bangles.
—From Rosarita, a slim novella by Anita Desai (Scribner, 2025).
[My father's] watch was a Timex with a face as big as a fifty-cent piece, and whenever my mother kept him waiting he would frown down at it and give it a tap. . . . when I was a little girl, I imagined he was trying to make time move faster—to bring my mother before us instantly, already wearing her coat, like someone in a speeded-up movie.
—From Three Days in June, a novel by Anne Tyler (Knopf, 2025).