Stuck by Bettina Simon

 

STUCK

by Bettina Simon

Translated by Kristen Herbert 

 

This train doesn’t stop at every
station, and what I can’t say,
I can’t write either. The train’s wheels
stick to the tracks, like how something sticks
to my hand, which got there earlier,
and I can’t wash it off. You left, but you kept
your hand on my back. The shame stuck.
Why are you sitting all rigid they ask,
and I can’t lean back, because then your hand
would press down on my heart.

Translator

Kristen Herbert is native to the Chicago area, but spent several years in Hungary as an English teacher. She is a co-editor and founder of the bilingual Hungarian-English literary journal The Penny Truth and serves on the masthead of Hungarian Literature Online. She is a current student in fiction at the MFA in Creative Writing at University of California-Riverside.

Author

Bettina Simon was born in Miskolc, Hungary, in 1990. Her first anthology of poems Beach(Strand) received wide accolades since its publication in 2018 by the Attila József Circle. In 2019, Bettina Simon earned a Zsigmond Móricz creator’s scholarship to complete her second anthology of poems. Since 2012, she has been a regular contributor to important Hungarian literary journals, and her works can be read in Prae, Élet és irodalom, and Alföld.