Joy thinks I’m on its side
when I run through a snowy field
but death keeps its eyes open
and looks into my right pocket
where a plastic airplane
flies and flies in a clenched fist.

Jacek Gutorow (b. 1970) is a Polish poet, translator, and literary critic. He has published five books of poems, which have been collected and published by Biuro Literackie in Nad brzegiem rzeki. Wiersze z lat 1990-2010 (At the River’s Edge. Poems 1990-2010). His most recent individual collection, Inne tempo (A Different Tempo), also published by Biuro Literackie, was nominated for the three most significant literary awards in Poland: the Nike Award, the Cogito Award, and the Gdynia Award.

Piotr Florczyk is an American poet and a translator from his native Polish. With Been and Gone: Poems of Julian Kornhauser (Marick Press, 2009), he introduced the English-speaking audience to Julian Kornhauser (1946–), one of the foremost Polish poets of the Generation of ’68. He is also the translator of a collection of poems by Anna Swir (1909–84), Building the Barricade and Other Poems of Anna Swir (Calypso Editions, 2011). He is the recipient of the 2007 Anna Akhmatova Fellowship for Younger Translators.

Homepage photograph via Flickr by Grażyna Niezgoda