The Neighbor's Goat

Dan Banu
When crossed the border at Romania, I really surprised by how many goat there were. The most in the whole world. Everywhere look, there are goat: in the field, in the garden, on the street, in the supermarket. People great interest in goat, I saw from the window of train carriage. After crossing the border, Romanians got on compartment, each with two or three goats. I asked man next to me take the goat down cuz I couldn't stand; the goat smelled bad. Man looked at me angrily and said sternly: Not my goat. I surprised cuz climbed together, and I asked, Whose is? He looked to left and said: It's my neighbor's.
 
 Ana-Maria Butuza
My neighbor, old Papadias, died alone and poor. He only had a miserable goat, all skin and bones. I took it home because I felt sorry for it. I fed it well, but it still remained thin. One day, I found it dead in the yard. I went to dig its grave, and when I came back, it was gone. I then saw it on the hill, grazing, but it seemed bigger. I brought it back, and in a few days, it kept growing. In a week, it was as big as a bison, walking around the pasture. People say it's the devil. I say it's luck. I milk it, and instead of milk, gold comes out.
 
 Alexandra Buhudini
At The Broken Sole, the rural writers' dancers gathered. This place was inside the carcass of a ship, with ribs sticking out and frozen circuits. The blizzard couldn't touch the chests of those who wrote like madmen, with the passion of those who want to remain beings even in non-being. Weighing things, they decided to have a gathering with all the books they had published with their own money. That evening, a rusty little robot, wearing a mohair sweater and rejected by celestial publishers, barged in, rolled up the books, set them on fire, and shot words into its chest. Boom.

 
(Translated by Laura-Monica Doroiman / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)