Laura Sims reads three poems--"Winter In You", "Your Second Head", and "Spin":

After Derek put up the Vallejo originals, I went through a few of them again, hearing my poems inside them. I hadn't looked at the originals in probably a year, so I didn't recognize many of the constructions, or how I got to them, how I "translated" (mauled?) the Spanish into English. I had always stated that there was some German playing a part in it as well, which I knew, but I never actually went back to find where I was playing with German, Spanish, and English, both denotatively and connotatively. But I grinned mildly when I found a particular representative in the last line of Trilce XIII, for which Vallejo ends the poem:

Odumodneurtse!

Clayton Eshleman translated that non- and sensically as:

Rednuhtetum

I translated it as:

O them on the new earth see!

*

Now, the German is in this primarily as German-English. I grew up--did I?--in a largely German-American community, where many of the older citizens still spoke English with a German tinge, so often one would hear, "Where'd you get dem? Dem meaning them. And also one would hear words like "tirty-touzand", which was "thirty-thousand". My grandfather's daughter is named Ruth, and her middle name is Ann. I remember my brother and I having a good-natured laugh one time after hearing my grandfather say, "Root Ann, pa da potatas" or "Ruth Ann, pass the potatoes".

So when I read Vallejo's Odumodneurtse! I heard, in multiple readings:

O dem on da new urt see.

I forgot to add that the expression, O, or Oh, is not really the classic standard poetic usage, like O Love, but a bit more the usage of many of those with whom I grew up, with the casual, Oh, as in "Oh, ya don't say"? But this may be something only a Midwesterner would understand.

Derek White and his Calamari Press will be publishing my second book of poetry, Trilce. He has put up a page with my audio recordings from Trilce and his visual interpretations of three of the poems. He explains all of this as well, right here.

Lara Glenum's book of poetry The Hounds of No is newly out and can be had here.

First published in SleepingFish, this is a recording of Trilce X:

First published in BlazeVOX, this is a recording of Trilce LXIII:

First published in BathHouse Magazine, this is a recording of Trilce LVI: