Spiritus, Lines of Volatilization
In the backyard the poet hears
the spirit of the old chestnut
piping over the ledge
morning jets, hotel showers
the neighbor gymnastically a
papercutting in chamotte.
That a toad still sits deep
in the sternum of her like stone
or pride, she says: Heart,
be an accordion and extend
yourself to actual kindness,
between the panels
to ether, that most volatile, so
that we may peer into the open
Small Town
Asymmetrical from the morning
the poet staggers through
alleys sporadically shot through
by the duty bound
reads for tragedy’s cuisine
and scents after an opening
to park the to-go rolls
in the roaring mouths of hot air hotels
stop-and-go metal herds whirring
where where she asks, if
the hunger for meadows is packaged
in tiling and décor stores
she matches the step
of the target holder, recites:
Christos is a fashion model
and Small Town calls itself City
the cloudspeaker whispers: This
way to your performance pizza!
And only a hatchling jogged along
sees through her smile.
Alone
to the glow of cell digits,
to the limited thinking
of the streets, she clings,
growing numb from longing,
from satiety-becoming-want
all around one-way streets,
fevers, distances: that cannot be
removed, that’s how,
you say, women have always been
rooms full of bounding
discord, in the uterus
visions drag by
of a kindly murderess
the poet steps inside her head
as if being staked to the circle again.
Under Drab Skies
she wintered as the felled
the twelve nights
in dampened hide
outside the pull of life
everything came out too short
the eye’s panoramic sweep
thighs and boards in the hall
compressed to perspective
slowly the animal skin expands
and the poet recalls
the word of the streaming, be streamed
if through falls of light would she
be torn away or carried
by this kayak of flesh?
Released
Aimless the poet permeates night
acrobatic expanses
she breathes in her bonebox like a soufflé
in the Mare Tenebrosum
becomes a variable for
cephalopods and their red, swinging sails:
effervescent tablet, rolled
and ruffled in strawberry storms.
Mornings the poet bore
holes in beds, covers,
flood gates for
small euphoric suns.
In clenched claws
birds bring the sea
to the city and set it free.
On vertical waters the poet
goes through rapids
spreads her empty hand
sounding, -ding bell
beside her, paper
cradled by the grasses
long deceased
girls, old women in the
physical sense,
there is no loss
only a flake
to ladle out the incline a featherweight
is what she makes of it.
Perhaps that all on its own
it falls and flutters to the top?
Without Weight
The wind rose from the folds
of night in the galls of space
and sought graduality,
bowed and spread itself
through the scalp of the poet.
She hung as in chalaza,
leapt over and into its flames,
bursting in fountains of all kinds,
a scattering in red, and saw:
you cannot extinguish water.
Taking fear and shadowdesire
as merely the waves
of an ocean,
showing them grace,
the wind swept her back
to the bright, distant memory
of how it could be
to remain in the emptiness
without a cosmonaut suit
from Without a Cosmonaut Suit
Karin Fellner
translated from the German by Zane Johnson
Listen to the original read by the poet:
These poems comprise the first cycle of Fellner’s fourth full-length collection titled, Ohne Kosmonautenanzug (parasitenpresse, 2015), rendered in the English as Without a Cosmonaut Suit. The collection is divided into four cycles, spoken by four thematically interrelated personas, which appear in the following order: “Poetin,” the poet, with a feminine suffix in the German indicating a female speaker; “Skarda,” shortened from “Scardanelli,” a pseudonym of Friedrich Hölderlin with which he signed his later poems in his years of “madness”; “Närrin,” the Fool, with a feminine suffix in the original; and, Anako Rettin, a mutation from the German “Anachoretin,” or “anchorite,” again suggesting the feminine suffix, “-in”.
The voice of “the Poet” represents the “overvoice” of the collection in an embryonic state at the beginning of its journey. The first poem, “Spiritus, Lines of Volatilization,” begins with the Poet’s invocation of the heart, petitioning it to extend beyond what fellow-poet Tamara Ralis has deemed “the flowers, sites, and slitherings of a toxic, post-post-modern creation” and into “the Open” of unfettered consciousness. By the poem, “Without Weight,” this process has culminated in the Poet undergoing the dissolution of the Self at the prompting of the “wind” (perhaps “the Open” in active aspect) in order “to remain in the emptiness / without a cosmonaut suit,” without a degree of separation.
Included among the flowers of this world are certainly Fellner’s many neologisms and linguistic mutations, such as “shadowdesire” (“Aberwunsch,” reminiscent of “Aberglaube,” or “superstition” in the English), as well as the poems’ rich intertextual conversations, often with alt- and mittelhochdeutsch sources. For instance, the last line of “Spiritus, Lines of Volatilization” is excerpted from Hölderlin’s Brot und Wein: “daß wir das Offene schauen”. Likewise, “kindly murderess” (süeziu toeterinne) is a citation of Heinrich von Morungen’s Middle High German work Vil süeziu senftiu toeterinne. Thus, the Poet appears as a manifestation of a longer lineage of German poetic voices, one whose dilemmas she takes up anew as she struggles against her imprisonment “to the limited thinking / of the streets”.
The voice of “the Poet” represents the “overvoice” of the collection in an embryonic state at the beginning of its journey. The first poem, “Spiritus, Lines of Volatilization,” begins with the Poet’s invocation of the heart, petitioning it to extend beyond what fellow-poet Tamara Ralis has deemed “the flowers, sites, and slitherings of a toxic, post-post-modern creation” and into “the Open” of unfettered consciousness. By the poem, “Without Weight,” this process has culminated in the Poet undergoing the dissolution of the Self at the prompting of the “wind” (perhaps “the Open” in active aspect) in order “to remain in the emptiness / without a cosmonaut suit,” without a degree of separation.
Included among the flowers of this world are certainly Fellner’s many neologisms and linguistic mutations, such as “shadowdesire” (“Aberwunsch,” reminiscent of “Aberglaube,” or “superstition” in the English), as well as the poems’ rich intertextual conversations, often with alt- and mittelhochdeutsch sources. For instance, the last line of “Spiritus, Lines of Volatilization” is excerpted from Hölderlin’s Brot und Wein: “daß wir das Offene schauen”. Likewise, “kindly murderess” (süeziu toeterinne) is a citation of Heinrich von Morungen’s Middle High German work Vil süeziu senftiu toeterinne. Thus, the Poet appears as a manifestation of a longer lineage of German poetic voices, one whose dilemmas she takes up anew as she struggles against her imprisonment “to the limited thinking / of the streets”.
Karin Fellner , b. 1970 in Munich, studied literature (M.A.) at the University of Munich and now works as an author and writing coach. She leads projects and seminars for the Lyrik Kabinett and the Literaturhaus Munich. She is a member of the “Reimfrei” author group. She has received several awards for her poems, most recently the Medienpreis from Lyrikpreis Meran (2012) and a grant from the state of Bavaria (2018). In addition to publications in anthologies, magazines and blogs, she has published five collections of poetry, most recently Ohne Kosmonautenanzug (parasitenpresse, Cologne 2015) and eins: zum andern (parasitenpresse, Cologne 2019), the latter of which was reviewed in Lyrikempfehlungen 2020.
Zane Johnson is a writer and translator. Recent essays, poems, and translations can be found in Quest, Asymptote, Anatolios Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, and Signaturen Magazin. He currently studies literature, translation, and the environmental humanities in Munich.
