Two Lines 9: Ghosts
Fall 2002
Out of Print
Funga the witch doctor is a liar; Rwanda has been cursed for a long time.
—from “The Oldest Orphan” by Tierno Monénembo, translated from French by Monique Fleury Nagem
This issue has remarkable breadth. We visit with people who, uprooted and exiled, live like apparitions in a world totally foreign to them; with people who wander their own streets lost and hopeless in the shadow of war; we listen in on a phantom love affair through the thinnest of walls, and we revel in the memory of youthful lust….
As the submissions arrived for this issue, we were struck by all that the world has to say about what haunts us—about sprits too ephemeral for us to grasp and phantoms we cannot escape. —THE EDITORS
Table of Contents
Other
Poetry
The Tale of the Dragon—A Fable | Night with Dream
Translated from Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin
cell 487 | anguish
Translated from French by Bradley Richie
The Labyrinth of My Tongue: A Selection
By Xiaobin Yang
Translated from Chinese by John Gery and Xiaobin Yang
Movements | Future for Pictures | Preparatory Sentences
Translated from German by Alan Prohm
Work Went On | The Paper Boy Had Fallen Asleep
Translated from Swedish by Eva Claeson
Fiction
Slow Nacre
Translated from Spanish by John Oliver Simon
The Last Butterfly
Translated from French by Norman R. Shapiro
The Oldest Orphan
Translated from French by Monique Fleury Nagem
Saint John the Baptist
Translated from Haitian