London, Texas

Apropos the writer as go-go dancer in front of a two-way mirror, ala Paris, Texas, there's a poem by Nguyen Dang Thuong I've translated from the Vietnamese, published in Fascicle:


The Artist

He swallowed ten white mice in five minutes the audience didn't applaud. He disrobed and twisted himself into yoga positions sucked his own dick the audience didn't cheer. He pulled out a sword to disembowel himself exposing his guts and liver the audience weren't terrified. In the end, he gave up. O, only that and it's already dusk? I still don't have a lover and am living in the most magnificent and desolate city on earth.


Nguyen Dang Thuong was born in Battambang, Cambodia in 1938, raised in Saigon, and lives in London. Translating from French into Vietnamese, he has converted Rimbaud, Cendras, Duras, Beckett and Linda Lê, among many others. “I don’t write poetry out of sadness. I become sad from writing poetry. To me, a finished poem is a corpse, a published poem a mummy." Although I've visited his "most magnificent and desolate city on earth" many times, I never saw him, since the man's a recluse. Always very cheerful on the email, yes, but aren't we all?