NOVEMBER
Such a picture of withering
demands active engagement.
Chrysanthemums bloom into the snow
like the color of a wounded animal.
A free moment between increments
of time filled with decay.
The mathematical beauty of frost.
Structures organize.
The end of struggling through mud.
At the end of November the plum tree
smells like dog kibble.
We sit and watch the chickadees in the feeder,
drinking hot tea, a celebration of security
with dusk’s familiar arrival.
Who wouldn’t love the gray Sunday afternoon;
we’re already so far from the scene with the fox
dragging its injured spine along the highway
like stolen prey.
MILAN DĚŽINSKÝ is a Czech poet. The poem “November” comes from his first volume of poems in English, A Secret Life, forthcoming from Blue Diode Press in July 2021.
About the Translator:
NATHAN FIELDS has been translating from Czech and Slovak for nearly two decades. His translation of Marek Šindelka’s novel Chyba (Aberrant) was selected by World Literature Today as one of the best translations of 2017. Among others, he translates the poetry of Milan Děžinský and Marie Iljašenko and is an editor of the literary magazine Project Plume.
Read more by Milan Děžinský:
Three poems in B O D Y
Three more poems in B O D Y
Four poems in PN Review
Poetry by A. N. DeJesús, Radka Thea Otípková, Sara Moore Wagner, Patricia Zylius, Pavla Melková, Angela Topping, Jessica Q. Stark, Karel Šebek, Eric Nelson, and M. Nasorri Pavone. Fiction by Sarah Rose Haughn, Genta Nishku, Lucy Tunstall, Petra Hůlová, Paweł Sołtys, Vratislav Kadlec, and Zach Murphy. An interview with Atomic Culture. Reviews of Eileen Cleary’s 2 a.m. with Keats and other books.
I asked a man I was in love with once /
if he was in love with me. No, he said.
His astonishing, indeed quite singular ability to touch the tip of his nose with his teeth was something he discovered almost inadvertently
Get used to it, kid, everybody wants something from you. /
And they’ll swear they’re giving you a gift.
Prague is falling behind the windows /
like an autumn curtain falls on summer /
like a fish falls after a whale
I’d listen to her work her way through its drama: the //
little girl’s errors hitched to curiosity, her wandering hands, the /
way the wolf and the girl had much more in common than not
What are you reading? Here at B O D Y we’ve always got a tome or two open, and we're happy to recommend these recent books.
Me, I’m the opposite, of course – my soul is in full view, as if it weren’t just my shirt that was ripped but my flesh too, and it’s right here, my clownish soul, winking at you with a tear in its eye, because like a steam engine it’s powerful and full of emotion at the same time.
say it /
briefly //
like /
a finch’s whistle
The wildflowers wilt over their own feet as I stagger through the dusty, jaded soil. One of my legs is broken. My mouth is parched.
Photo credit: Pavel Růžička 
