by Ron Winkler
          translated from German by Jake Schneider

the way I knew you, as a chant from naked fragrant June
and the way you could hasten your hair, was a trip
to a southern condition. there were four–lipped coasts there,
the touch of acacia, and in the dunes behind them we exchanged
unusual light, an almost genetic correspondence
that we called an altar and where we deposited deep sea nights,
little jellyfish sensualities under the auspices
of our eye bugs and sometimes our heron joints.
I researched in you the most fantastical metaphors
of this century and tended to the feral zoo
of your glances. we oystered around each other oceanically, as
we belonged among those who had shamanic dreams
and those who are dreamt of shamanically. I was
never so two as with you.

by Ron Winkler
          translated from German by Jake Schneider

the sea is flawlessly whipped up.
it earned a more unsettling designation.
right now the wind is going through a pedagogical phase.
the trees stooping down to sheer metaphors.
the gull song’s Wailing Wall implies
a full–on Wailing Settlement behind it.
the concept of a tide probably finds
mass appeal among Arrivalists.
the longer you stare, the sudsier.
but that’s as tricky to prove
as the kinship between sea–
anemonies and animosities.

by Ron Winkler
          translated from German by Jake Schneider

wind forces flagellations on the trees —
a suffering grasped out of thin air.
for reassurance, it must be added:
their blossoms carry no pistols.
the landscape dignified, as if once
populated by Flemish painters.
the surrounding grass something
between hill swans and bristle bulls.
probably, the tread–on green
is the flip side of a discrete being.
quite different, the inevitable fauna —
in first place comes the frog’s racket faction.
when they’re not bathing, they’re baptising
the scene with their throats’ green notes.
the waves are easy to identify —
they jump springform pans on the land.
in the transition area, a few yards
of sludge serve as mud for art’s sake.
the seagulls serve onto nothing.
too bisyllabic their appearance.
whoever swims here is not a stroke,
but a swish in the water.

by Ron Winkler
          translated from German by Jake Schneider

so these cows, right, were parading
around like absurd typewriters.
for that matter they weren’t cows at all.
more like black–and–white moments caught in pixels.
and no typewriter could muck up
a meadow. whatever. what mattered
was the blink–of–an–eye–ness of a thing.
together with airy psyche, right.
multiple dimensions bottomed against each other
and, in spite of constant refreshing, turned up
tainted search results: grass drops,
existence deposits,
and past them the migration
of a narrow awareness. here
the meadow and there the contorted messages
of their horns. eyes
like uninhabited planets. cows, right,
as agreed upon, cows —
at the end of their biography.