#owengood

In Focus
Yesterday’s Biker by Balázs Szálinger

This beautiful, despairing poem about a biker is a love letter to someone we never missed and an obituary to a stranger we never knew.

Fiction
Ophelia by Dorka Graf

Closed wards, inertia, and the summer the rivers broke their banks—a meeting between two young people in a cheap bar unearths buried emotion.

Poetry
“it was iron: i thought by János Marno

A fragmentary avantgarde poem by Hungarian poet János Marno, with seemingly no framework, contorted with cynicism, lust, shame, villainy, and terror.

Poetry
The Ghost of Rococo by János Marno

In this poem by Hungarian poet János Marno in a private moment of near hallucination a ladybird on a finger is mistaken for a drop of blood.

Fiction
Visit by László Sepsi

In the criminal underworld of László Sepsi’s upcoming novel Territorium, talk never really was an option and violence comes with the territory.

Poetry
The Personification of Nothing by János Marno

An aphoristic one-word poem by veteran Hungarian poet János Marno that captures both the black humor and the utter pessimism of noir.

Poetry
Osmosis by János Marno

The Hungarian poet János Marno considers the bright optimism of the ageing Jorge Luis Borges in the face of death, and a new life in Buenos Aires.

Fiction
The Last Terrorist by Máté Makai

In this dystopian, Hungarofuturist short story by Máté Makai, an investigative journalist follows a cell of time-travelling climate terrorists.

Fiction
Sunday Afternoon in the Hills by Rita Halász

In this short story by Hungarian writer Rita Halász a mother and her partner tensely await the homecoming of her teenaged daughter.