Malak Mattar, Untitled (detail), 2024, charcoal on paper
The Noodle Maker’s Shop
Guanzhang, China
Everything is covered
by the fine dust of flour
the walls aged by it
scoured by tiny grains
the small window
no longer transparent
a passerby can make out only
the bare bulb’s cold glow
bleaching the room
like the hollow of a salt mine
and the repetitive movements
of a blurred shadow
digging its way out
Karina Borowicz has recent work in Bellevue Literary Review, American Letters & Commentary, and The Southern Review. Her translations have appeared in Poetry Daily and her recent poems have been published in Indiana Review, Hanging Loose, Poetry Northwest, and AGNI. Her collection The Bees Are Waiting, which was selected by Franz Wright for the 2011 Marick Press Poetry Prize, won the Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry and was named a Must-Read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her most recent collection, Proof, won the 2014 Codhill Poetry Award. She lives in western Massachusetts. (updated 7/2014)
Borowicz’s debut collection The Bees Are Waiting was reviewed in AGNI Online by Jason Tandon.