Maybe you remember how some xtraterestrials once landed on the football field, that one with leds bought with European money, because their flying saucer broke right here. Mnò, the mayor is a clever child, he told everyone in the country that we are best friends with the xtraterestrials and all day they are coming, we are already bored. Make sarmale[1], take out the plum brandy, bend over Maria. Tourists flow like water in the valley. A guy saw one, it was hidden in the bush, it was small, green and with bulbous eyes. Well, when we went, there was nothing, long live Vasile, hold the paper.
[1]Sarmale=some kind of traditional cabbage rolls with pork meat
Florentina Ghițescu
On the first date he grabbed her hand. At the second he kissed her. On the third he took her to the stadium. She didn't come on the fourth. She never came. Se knew she had a rival against whom she could not win. Some true men running after a ball. A few thousand more who live and die with every scored goal. She knew the deeper meanings of the ball game. There, on the stadium, when she looked at that boy, she knew that she didn't want to share him with anyone, and she chose to leave. It would have been a war with a known end.
Radu Gramatovici
A match that ends in penalties draws all the breath from the stadium and the toilets are empty, I tell myself as I sneak after the woman I had been chasing all evening. The tension rises. The goalkeeper stuck between the pillars looks on in despair. It's too late to escape. He feels each other's slit like a stab in the belly. It's goal. The unbridled roar of the tribune covers every other noise. I return alone, in time for the last penalty. A TV camera shows me with the slit open as I jump with the others. What a victory.
(Translated by Ioana Andreea Radu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.