Assistant Editor Sakinah Hofler: Translations can transcend the language of origin and transport us to universal places. Through the use of both warm and cold imagery as well as the exploration of nature, Marlon Hacla’s work, originally published in Filipino, builds and collapses two beings (human and beast) and two states of being (alive and dead) to explore what it means to actually live. We’re thankful to Kristine Ong Muslim (whose wonderful work we’ve published in the past) for her thoughtful translation of Hacla’s work, which allows us to experience the beauty of haunting and the in-between.
To hear Kristine Ong Muslim read Marlon Hacla’s “This Creature,” click below:
This Creature
translated from Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim
Rose–colored and lily-colored and ash-colored, coarse-skinned, swaying and being swept away to the waterfall, toward the realm of pako ferns, and would later vanish, reappear, cavort in sand, danced and filled every hollow, bloomed to find liberation, proselytized with the gospel of ugly truths, behaved as human and as beast, wailed like a cow cut in half, went astray like a cat, found illumination and unveiled one’s innermost dark designs, imperiled like an airplane crashing into houses where thousands of children sleep, fabricated some clouds, stroked the cheek of a woman who had fallen asleep in the fields, plaited stories and lies and truths and words filled with tragedy and madness, reclined and then got out of bed to evade obliteration, torn up like a calendar whose pages were ripped every day, became delirious and dying, moved to the other world, reached the dominion of the dead, resisted over and over, attempted to return, attempted to return, and attempted to return to this world.
Marlon Hacla is a programmer, writer, and photographer. His books include May Mga Dumadaang Anghel sa Parang (2010), Glossolalia (2013), Labing-anim na Liham ng Kataksilan (2014), and Melismas (2016). He created @estelavadal, the first robot poet in Filipino. He lives in Quezon City, Philippines, with his cats.
Kristine Ong Muslim is the author of nine books, most recently the fiction collection The Drone Outside (Eibonvale Press, 2017). Widely anthologized, her short stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Tin House, and World Literature Today. She grew up and continues to live in a rural town in southern Philippines.
For more miCRo pieces, CLICK HERE
