The Neighbor's Goat

Dana Popescu
She's fatter than ours, Ioan, and gives more milk. And Anica's always bragging at the market about the cheese she makes, as if it were some kind of delicacy. Ever since the mayor's been stopping by their place to check the livestock, but only when Mișu's up at the sheepfold, you can't bring that goat back to earth. And I'm bitter, Ioan, because I know how to make better cheese, and I'm more beautiful and more skilled than she is, but I never had the luck of a good buck. Where are you rushing off to, you fool? To the sheepfold, after Mișu. Maybe the mayor wants to change the goat.
 
 Horațiu Dudău
The house is normal, the car is normal, the kid's not a genius, my wife doesn't scold me when I drink, I don't cheat on her, sometimes we stay home during the holidays, I play the lottery and never win, I don't have an important job, I don't have to kiss anyone's ass, I wake up very early, I'm always on time to pick up my kid from school, I don't have the thick neck of a hustler, I've got the face of a loser, I speak politely to people, I don't cut in line, I wait patiently for others to cross the street, and I don't think I'll ever raise goats, not even a baby goat.
 
 Yuka Brevi
Basically, you didn't guess. I'm a fantastic, cold, immortal, venomous creature. I rise from a sorrowful heart, born of an envious mind. I slither through the grass, glide through the dew, scratch the earth with my silver scales, taste the air with my split tongue. I slip in unseen, in the stillness of night, through the rotting fence slats, into the neighbor's yard. The goat is the only one who sees me. She ignores me. She doesn't care. She's too smart for the filthy pen she's trapped in, so I bite her thigh. She doesn't deserve to suffer.

 
(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)