LatinosUSA

Excerpt

Connotations 

Some words carry heavy
burdens like 
the German word for leader,
Führer.
Consequently, I choose
Leiter for leader in my translation
from English into German.
Just like the English version for 
mein Vaterland,
my homeland,
makes me bristle from past connotations
as homeland security 
echoes historical commands
of history’s despots.

Unfortunate word choices
conjure connotations of conquests
of native lands.

Cry Wolf           
	--Inspired by sculpture Howl by Luis Jiménez 1986 

Lavender and slate
plastic fiber
re-enforced
shimmering wolf
bares his teeth
arches his neck
as if howling to a moonworld--

his undulating tail
rippling waves
naked scream
spouting from
his protruding ribs--
hungry
like the “Howl”
of a poet
starving hysterical naked
looking for impossible
fiber in a plastic moonworld
screaming
about
minds
exposed
lost
in the wail
of
the sirens
of Los Alamos
gobbled up
by Madison Avenue

the wolf
crying in the
zoo of reality.

Virtual Fame
	In the future everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.
							--Andy Warhol

Reality television 
gives us famous chefs 
touting nutritious
satisfying meals in a jiffy.
Famous, or want to be famous designers
create fashion plates
with flattering garments 
chosen for the dowdy
yearning for style.
Experts promise
team effort solutions
for any imaginable ailment
or shortcoming.
Team-effort-weight-loss,
wrinkle loss
anxiety loss,
social ineptitude loss.

Un-famous people eager
to star for free in virtual reality 
in cost-effective reality shows,
text details of un-famous facts to producers,
friends and strangers.

Reality television and texting
the opium for the famous
21st century masses.

The Red Sofa

Tired of the hotel’s restaurant fare
we slip through its revolving door
and lollygag around the French Quarter
in search of culinary promise.

We linger in front of 
a furnishings storefront 
admire the sleek design of a curvy red sofa:
After a couple of weeks of looking at that 
in your living room
you’ll want to take it outside and shoot it!
blurts the bag lady
pushing her cart past us.
Startled, we laugh and stroll off.

Today, leaning back on my red sofa 
the middle-aged bag lady plops down 
next to me and 
warns about summer’s curvy 
French Quarter
al fresco feasts…

© Silvia Kofler

Praise for «Gambol the World»

“Silvia Kofler’s poems reflect a struggle not unlike that of a Henry James heroine, through her persona’s disenchantment and immersion in the toxic secrets of our nuclear and cultural nightmares take her not to Europe but from her native Austria to America. Exposed to the glitz of Vegas, the tinsel dreams of pop culture, and the hollow core of our betrayed illusions, she seeks the authentic where she finds it. In that way she creates a new cluster of epiphanies that offers such hope as art provides when it is deeply compassionate and informed by a vision enriched by more than one culture. Hers is a voice much needed on both sides of the Atlantic.” – David Ray

Paperback

Gambol the World: Eine Weltanschauung, by Spartan Press, 2017 has been translated into Portuguese by Carlos Ramos, and was also published as a bilingual edition by Ghost Editions in Portugal, 2021

https://www.abebooks.com/9781946642172/Gambol-World-Weltanschuung-Kofler-Silvia-1946642177/plp

A Link to the Bilingual Edition

https://bibliografia.bnportugal.gov.pt/bnp/bnp.exe/registo?2087943

Author Biography

Silvia Kofler is a widely published poet, translator, and educator who has read her work in many places like the Yale Club and Poets House in New York City, and at Schokoladen in Berlin, Germany.  She is a member of the American Literary Translators Association, the Collaborators, the Writers Place, The Diversifiers, and the National League of American Pen Women. She still teaches online for Park University.