Lori Lubeski, in another language

 

in another language
none of this happens
you are not torn from
me by gunshots 

you do not go
into your backyard
while watching
television 

translates to
missed opportunity
in another language 

dreams such as these
are not acceptable

I’m incredibly struck by the condensed, extended lyric of Montana-based Polish poet Lori Lubeski, her book-length lyric in another language (Austin TX/Branford CT: Serious Publication, 2026), a book that self-describes as a “tale of tenderness, hysteria, corruption, and mercy amidst a devastating loss which defies translation.” As the internet provides, Lubeski is the author of a handful of prior titles, including Dissuasion Crowds The Slow Worker (O Books, 1988); obedient, a body (n.d.), Sweet Land (n.d.), Estranged Domain (Serious Publication, 2023) and Storm Value Omen (with Scott MacLeod; Serious Publication, 2026), although I would be interested to see a proper, full list of published books (and chapbooks, if any).

Throughout in another language, Lubeski’s poems are composed as a series, a sequence, of individual threads of precise, compact lyric that, after a while, begin to form complex shapes. She writes a lush clipped lyric of and between language; an incredibly precise document of family and memory, writing out translation as a means to what can’t be said or fully understood through words, but only felt. Through in another language, Lubeski offers the limitations of language, and of translation, while broadening the possibility of each through both. “in another / language / this will / cost money / I don’t have / any means / of making,” she writes, early on in the collection, “sell my body / instead / for the / chance to / see you / laughing // no need / for translation [.]” Through extended, short, interconnected lyrics, Lubeski writes out a language of trauma, of conflict and violence and loss, set firmly in a foundation of hope and permanence, offering deliberate and condensed moments; offering how language and translation works, and how it fails; how it allows and both conceals comprehension, one impossible step against another.

Mother

in another language
means
disengaged 

translates to
crying
in another language
translates to
kidnapping
in another language
translates to
missed the bus
in another language 

where verbs
don’t conjugate