Two Snails Stuck to My Cheeks

Abstract

Two Snails Stuck to My Cheeks Matei Visniec (bio) Translated by Adam J. Sorkin (bio) and Lidia Vianu (bio) When I shook hands with himhis hand remained in my handthat’s how he is, generous, I told myselfas I tried to get rid of his warm handthat grasped my own ever more tightlywhen he tapped me on the shoulderhis other hand remained stuck to my shoulderand when he came near to kiss mehis lips remained like two snails stuck to my cheekshis sternum detachedand remained stuck to my chestbecause that’s how he is, in any embrace he gives his alland when he looks into your eyesat the next instant his eye-sockets are empty it’s true that we’d been very closebut never did I imagine thatI’d see him flayed right before my eyeswith his heart tumbling down to my feetjust because we were going to say goodbye [End Page 288] Matei Visniec Poet, playwright, novelist, and journalist, matei visniec was born in Romania but left in 1987, and since the 1990s he has lived in Paris, working at Radio France Internationale. He writes poetry and fiction in Romanian, but drama, now, in French. Visniec has published five collections of poetry, six novels, and more than fifty plays; he has been recognized by major awards in Romania and France. How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients and Other Plays is a selection of his plays in English. Adam J. Sorkin adam j. sorkin has published more than sixty books of Romanian translation. His recent books include The Hunchbacks’ Bus by Nora Iuga, longlisted for the National Translation Award in Poetry (Bitter Oleander, co-translated with Diana Manole); Syllables of Flesh by Floarea Tutuianu (Plamen, with Irma Giannetti); A Deafening Silence by Magda Cârneci (Shearsman, with Madalina Banucu and Cârneci); and The Return of the Barbarians by Mircea Dinescu (Bloodaxe, with Lidia Vianu). Sorkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Penn State. Lidia Vianu lidia vianu is professor of Modernist and Contemporary British Literature at Bucharest University, where she also directs the publishing house Contemporary Literature Press. She has been Fulbright professor at the UCal Berkeley and SUNY Binghamton. Author of more than twenty books of literary criticism, she has translated over seventy books into English and Romanian, among which Marin Sorescu’s The Bridge, translated with Adam Sorkin, won the 2005 Poetry Society (U.K.) Prize for European Poetry Translation. Copyright © 2019 The Massachusetts Review, Inc