TRAFIKA EUROPE CORNER with Clayton McKee: REGAINING RESISTANCE by Arno Bohlmeijer

First it’s freezing, then eerily hot again.
The wind can see what I’m coming down with.
My hat, shades and earplugs do ignore the elements, 
when bugs or beetles find weak links in my lugging sleep.

But the deep color red of a dragonfly doesn’t sting, 
eyelids wipe the sweat, heels are pressed on the ground, 
the pubic bone turns to the sun, that gives me goose bumps.

Fully nude and smooth, tight in the wind and light, my stomach
becomes a landing strip for the finest kind of swift wings and feet,
innocently free, curious and numerous, looking in all the nooks and 
crannies, not afraid to touch places where people haven’t been for ages.

By Arno Bohlmeijer

Arno Bohlmeijer is a bilingual English/Dutch author from the Netherlands. He has written various novels, children’s stories, and poetry in both languages. We are excited to include a sampling of Bohlmeijer’s poetry in our forthcoming issue of Trafika Europe as a non-focus contribution. This is one of the eight that you will be able to read.

“Regaining resistance” really stuck out to me for its interaction between body and nature, a subject that I find recurring in my favorite pieces and my own writing. Upon realizing that our preparations of hats, sunglasses, etc. don’t fully remove us from nature and the elements, the poetic voice accepts their body’s relation to the world. The intimacy in this interaction relies on the sense of touch, from the sun to the animals touching down to explore an often-covered land. And interestingly, not only does nature not judge those who exist in unison with it, but it shows how the mind affects intimacy with other humans as nature goes where people haven’t. Whether the poetic voice closes themself off or others are rejecting them remains unclear; however, nature has the power to fight against those obstacles, perhaps showing readers how to regain some resistance against our own selves.

Bohmeijer’s other seven poems will appear in our “Blast from the Past” issue. Stay tuned for the release of that issue in December 2024 to check out the rest of the work. I’ll leave you with an epigraph-style poem that opens the work:

Life can write,
words will touch:
language in the flesh.

These three lines exemplify Bohlmeijer’s poems in this issue. It greatly exemplifies the connections between language, the body, literature, and spirituality/life. Literature and language are both living flesh and what makes us alive.

By Clayton McKee

Read previous posts in The Trafika Europe Corner series:

TRAFIKA EUROPE CORNER with Clayton McKee: DESERT by Pèire Millet, translated by Clayton McKee

TRAFIKA EUROPE CORNER with Clayton McKee: TE and EU Prize for Literature

Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: TE’s Prizes for Prose and for Verse

Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: GARDEN OF EDEN by Sarah Talboys-Smith

Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: An excerpt from the play THE PARADISE OF THE WATERS by Isabelle Eberhardt, translated by Donald Mason

Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: An excerpt from the play AGAINST FRATERNITY written in Catalan by Esteve Soler, translated by H.J. Gardner

Trafika Europe Corner: LOST IN TRANSLATION by Hannah Katerina

Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: Three poems by Károly Lencsés, translated by Ágnes Megyeri

Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: Three Poems by Guðrið Helmsdal, translated by Randi Ward

Three poems by Deniz Durukan – in Trafika Europe Corner II.11 by Andrew Singer