China Town

Răzvan Dițescu
I walk down narrow alleys until I get to the door with red beads. I go in. The wrinkled old woman studies me intently. I blink. In the next life you will be a chicken. I laugh out loud. Come closer. We come face to face, she blows a bitter smoke and I wake up in a cage surrounded by hysterical hens. The cook comes, puts his hand in the cage and grabs my wings. I struggle in vain. In the flickering light of the neon light, I see the raised blade of the cleaver. I blink. I am back at the witch's house. Come closer, she says. I turn around and run away, feet pounding the earth.
 
 Anca Postescu Stancov
I step off into the adopted city of my youth, the train station is the same, there are no longer chickens on the tracks, in the cemetery I place many flowers at the headstones of many longings, I don't recognize the modernized park, I feel awkward and nervous, I was hoping for a tender stillness of time but the grin of useless urbanization burns me, I hurry toward the old pastry shop, planning to soothe myself with a cabbage pastry and a vanilla slice. In the window, the name of the store -"Everything for 1 buck"-dances aggressively, I manage to run away before my heart becomes a second-hand object in China town.
 
 Paul Dârvariu
There, the streets are full of stalls selling vegetables, exotic fruits and guinea pigs. You can buy anything from dog meatballs, heart-shaped bamboo and potency drops, to devices that read your future in tea. But the most amazing thing is that, in the middle of the market, I met a dragon. No, it was not a street actor, it was a real dragon. I approached it and asked it gently: do you like to fly? It answered me in the purest Romanian speech: yes, only when I am allowed to fly by plane.

 
(Translated by Eliza Radu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)