“You live dangerously,” I wanted to say to the young man just ahead of me in the check-in line at Cancun Airport, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to seem like a fuddy-duddy; however, I was concerned about his sipping tequila straight from a pint bottle at 10 am in the morning with a full day of travel to cope with.

“You should give this poor fellow a chance,” I wanted to say to the clerk behind the counter after she turned that young man away for being a few minutes late but mostly for being tipsy; but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to seem under the influence as well and to risk being turned away even though there was plenty of time before takeoff.

“You should’ve spoken up,” I told myself while idling in the waiting area for my flight, wondering how that poor young fellow with the tequila bottle was ever to get home. Where did he go after being turned away from the counter?

“You live in too much fear of the world,” I often chide myself, but I also want to play it safe, and when I travel I hide my brandy in a bottle marked Cough Syrup.

Paul Sohar

ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre, publishing seven volumes of translations, including Dancing Embers, his Kanyadi translations (Twisted Spoon Press, 2002); and two volumes of his own poetry, Homing Poems (Iniquity, 2006) and The Wayward Orchard, a Wordrunner Prize winner (2011).

Other awards: first prize in the Lincoln Poets Society contest, and second prize for a story from Rhode Island Writers’ Circle (2014).

Latest volumes of translation: Silver Pirouettes (TheWriteDeal 2012) and In Contemporary Sense (Iniquity Press, 2013).

Prose works include True Tales of a Fictitious Spy (SynergeBooks, 2006), the collaborative novel The Club at Eddy’s Bar (Phaeton Press; Dublin, Ireland; November 2013), and a collection of three one-act plays from One Act Depot (Canada, 2014).

His magazine credits include Agni, Exit 13, Gargoyle, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Salzburg Poetry Review, Seneca Review, and others. He has given talks at MLA and AHEA conferences and lectures at Centennial College, New Jersey (USA).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Review by Helga Lénárt-Cheng of Contemporary Tense in Ragazine (August 2013); this volume of Paul Sohar’s translations, from Hungarian into English, of poems by Sándor Kányádi was published in 2013 by Iniquity Press.