Long Marketplace Poems

With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

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"Lizzie Borden took an axe,
gave her mother forty whacks,
when she saw what she had done,
gave her father forty-one,
she washed herself from a watered pail,
she claimed their lies and vicious tales,
she pled not guilty and moaned...

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THIS WAS BASICALLY ORCHESTRATED BY CIRO GARGANO IDEA MAKING DONALD PELLEGREN BELIEVE HE AND I WERE PARENTS AFTER A BREIF ENCOUNTER WITH HITMAN PELLEGREN HE BECAME OBSESSED WITH FATHERING A CHILD WITH ME HE RANTED...

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Perhat Tursun

Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Born and raised in Atush, a city in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Tursun began writing poetry...

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Dear Toni,

I saw you on The Daily Show
the other day
having your way
with Trevor,
or was it the other way around?
Not sure.

I'm also not sure where we first went wrong,
but I'm sorry for once having thought you...

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Long 'ere legends encountered finesse amidst flairs of passionate cravings,
thereupon, be a period wherein an episode occasioned an opportunity that will be reserved forever.
An outbreak of dismembering words are been exchanged between groups of rapscallions.
The...

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As dawn unfolds today beyond my fractured windowpane,
a breeze beguiles the ashen drapes. Like snakes they slip aside,
revealing wanton worlds that race and run aground, insane,
immersed in scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and...

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October Rain

Is it
simply a case of precipitation,
moist warm air condensation or
are they God’s tears showering us with love,
as rain washes away our sorrows,
in the hope of brighter tomorrows.

Gloomy grey skies conceal a shy sun
with murky...

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6 miles up river Arikara are encountered,
they are a people of amenable disposition and are agrarians,
they chuckle with sympathy as we inform them of our grizzly confrontation
and they tell us that disease had forced them...

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I see the smiles beaming in your eyes
And I can hear the passion moving in your voice
I can feel your breath moving inside me
And your spirit soaring above me
I wish if I could fully understand...

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I
At the marketplace
by sunrise
when the serenity of the dawn is ravished by unknown
voices…

When the Sun passes through the merry-go-round
beyond the horizon
when the turbulent wind is silenced,
and the voice of the cicadas
is no longer heard…

From a...

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Sonny hid behind the melons 
In a busy Asian marketplace,
Near the plantains and the mangos 
Where the shadows could obscure his face.  
He inhaled the air around him 
And enjoyed the fragrant scent of...

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I recall the day she journeyed to the delta from her village above the first cataphract with a New Kingdom attitude and an Old Kingdom strut, inspiring rumors to be passed from shadoof to shadoof...

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A jailer has never two similar days
never knowing what will be next
I should know for that's what I do
way back in the days of no text

There were these two prisoners
two Christians Paul and Silas by...

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Beneath the moon's veil, where stars whisper at the universe's edge,
Thoughts sway in the echoes of riddles uncomprehended.
Here, the sacred message from a journey with the hallucinogen's verse
Tells a tale of how the soul's science...

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Beneath the moon's veil, where stars whisper at the universe's edge,
Thoughts sway in the echoes of riddles uncomprehended.
Here, the sacred message from a journey with the hallucinogen's verse
Tells a tale of how the soul's science...

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To the bride of Christ I pen this letter.

Aya Jesu
Nwanyi Chineke.

I see you wobbling your feet lazily.
Blissfully content with the comfort of this world.
Forgetting you were sent on an errand.
For this world remains a marketplace....

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If this is freedom take me to Robinson Island

When shall we again sing the redemption songs?
The strings of freedom are long forgotten in my nation
Injustice is their system and we pledge to resistance
The freedom our...

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footsteps as I walk to the podium*



Lights dim, where words writhe like serpents in the darkness, I concoct a brew of bitter brutalities. 

“The cacophonies of criticism, discordant symphonies, assails my sensibilities, a symphony of...

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Victory at the Hippodrome

They were hiding their stalls out of sight near the race course at Olympia

No signs but everyone knew where they were under cover of dubious propriety

On track for instant wealth and gratification...

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Everyone says to forget him.
Whenever I talk randomly about him,
They say, "Move on! Let go! Forget him!"
Someone better will come, so let your heart swim.

It's not that I cling to the past we shared.
In fact,...

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—Our days of no beginning and no end—

When a giant thinker who wandered in the wilderness of meditation 
for a long time came to find himself, leaped over a wall that was built 
for a...

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I know I've been to Chicago,
     But I only remember the snow.
I know that I've been to Albuquerque,
     but I mostly just remember the hot marketplace
 ...

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Oh America The Great, What Happened? 
You were the land of the free, the home of the brave, 
But now you are the kingdom of the lost, the empire of the depraved.
A nation built on...

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Vivid flashbacks from bloodshed battles
his soul still ravaged by devious dictators,
cries from fallen comrades still echo in his mind,
but he continues to walk upon a path of pandemonium. 

Reluctantly he ventures forward with
vengeance portrayed through...

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