EMBLEMATIC FESTIVAL OF ECUADOR
PEDRO LASTRA (Quillota, Chile, 1932)
Rereading of Enrique Lihn
Because I wrote I am alive.
THE
But I do not write,
I hardly have a word anymore,
Enrique Lihn, friend of the best days
(those who did not arrive)
what can i do at last
To find the kingdom that only dreams create
with the word that was not in the dream:
the birds of yesteryear
or a girl next to the jasmine tree
in the center of the patio, if there was that patio
And it is not invented by the other one that I am when I return every morning
my mortal enemy, the one who lives in my house,
the one who denies and mocks
of my little stubborn gambler traps
or aspiring to the scepter of the just,
if there is justice and just
and floods, with his immortal dove
and all that.
FERNANDO CELY HERRÁN (Bogotá, Colombia, 1957)
Directions
I dont know
how can you
walk around,
with my look
tangled
in your body.
FERNANDO VARGAS VALENCIA (Bogotá, Colombia, 1984)
YOU FELL ASLEEP WITHOUT NOTICE, JUST.
I hope when you wake up
the sapphic blink
from the stones scratched from the outside,
do not be scared.
Hope you remember me
When something lets you go back
I hope the trains return to this haunted city
and with them,
your so particular shape
to make me want to devour you whole.
You won everything with that dissipation of your ashes:
You've earned yourself a place in my false promises.
I hardly understand the magnitude of my defeat:
I am the heart that behind your upright body gives you away.
I will no longer believe in your useless love affairs.
I will no longer believe in the release of your orgasm
that hangs vile and weak at all ends of my body.
I will no longer believe in my body:
I have plenty of limbs for these days of intense drunkenness,
I have plenty in this city of laconic bellows
where I look for you and you don't appear,
where the streets smell of your radical moods,
where the library wants to collapse with envy,
where women make me angry and afraid,
where women are an apology to death,
where women are unbearable and arrogant.
You locked yourself in the cave and left me outside.
You locked it and you swallowed it.
I will forgive you.
Don't do it again, constellation postponed;
repress your desire not to be:
here, in my poor student bag,
there will always be room for your exaggerated sleep.
FELIPE LÓPEZ (Manizales, Colombia, 1985)
Someone had delusions about the Chimborazo, and I celebrate it with flowers that limit
the mountain ranges of warrior souls
I accompany the delusional who dare to pulverize themselves, the wise men, the taitas, the
potatoes, cassava, tubers that found their home in these lands
Delirious with every speck of dust that enters the windows, because they are the vestiges
From the mountain ranges, from the dead skin of jaguars, to the blood of the sad Night
A courage, and delirium before the beauty, delirium before the horror, for the lands that deify
Bachué, they have chosen the ruffian, the pirate, and the chains
But every cell makes me proud, even my canine teeth, molars, are rinsed
of the cane that raves in the tropics, the liquid that is born of the moors puffs up,
the longboat that sets sail in the confines of the Amazon, the poppy that shakes the subsoil
You have to be in the prisons of the jungle and say that this is true
Delirium against America, because crazy people climb the ceibas, we apnea in
the Rio de la Plata, we go beyond the dimension and divinity in the flavor of ayahuasca,
rave about pillows that dream of springs in Lost City
Refuge from delusions who believe in the impossible
YENNY LEÓN (Medellín, Colombia, 1987)
From Between Trees and Stones (2013)
Yeti, not all words
sentenced to death.
Wislawa Szymborska
the girl sinks
in the fourth longest silence on earth
spend the day
locked in a bubble of fire
the yeti shakes
to the tiny circle
leaves traces of rust
the stone is silent
against the rain.
when the days are over
and the blade
no longer incubate its root
immersed in the reverse of the stones
will lie the maddened void of light
the big losses
they will make the mountain
its center
like ports of no return
they will embrace the memory
just to shape the past
will be so old in our eyes
like the fate of water.
IRINA HENRÍQUEZ (Bolívar, Colombia, 1988)
Finding
My way of waiting for something to happen is obsessive. Let the beast that hides behind the undergrowth of the day's events jump on me. But I do not wait for more than a few seconds: I wish to be found while searching or celebrating a wrong finding.
And the best way to find it is by being immobile while everything rotates or the bells ring: the world is then all the things that sooner or later are camouflaged under the appearance of the everyday. I desire the tide of images that remain after each movement in the finest meshes of the air. I wish to possess what you look at without knowing, all the things that in the name of chance have remained consigned in the nothingness of abandonment. Because you didn't realize it, because the hawk is the owner of his complaint but he does not know that it has reached me, because it is in the world and it is my find.
RÉMY DURAND (Carácas, Venezuela, 1946). French.
The man who cries
to GR
the man who cried
The man who cries
wears bitter filigree black flowers
no longer has a name
my name is nobody says
he does not know what his name is
I don't know what my name is
does matters
forgot who he is
who I am? He says
maybe the guy who crosses the street
no arms no gaze
The man who cries
can no longer breathe
Air please air! He says
nor walk nor walk
dirty vessels lie in his path
thrown and torn garments
wrinkled costumes no dance costumes
shirts stained with empty words
an entire continent thrown to the ground
thirsty bloom withered hopes
The man who cries
you feel like nothing
does not want to dress
Oh! again shave look at my bones in the mirror
the eyes without a girl my lifeless eyes
dress again what a fucking war and those puppet loves
what an asshole Valentine's Day
the man who cries only wants to roam naked
down the roads of hell
you say you love me but you leave
you say you love me but you don't come
go my heavenly love, blessed love
Let's toast with champagne to honor
You don't stay and you don't go!
Let's toast with champagne on that great day of my unemployment
liters of champagne my love glorious delicious
Well you retire me, you stop me, you invite me to burst
yes my lady my lady my lady
stay don't come stay beautiful
I know everything, you are the permanent beauty
and here the pieces lie
of your new ephemeral lover
the one you want, crumb of your crumbs
waste walks
Call me Waste, my name is Waste
one step forward two steps back
The man who cries
walk barefoot in the wind
there where nobody talks to him
there where nobody asks
Oh! how are you? how are you? what happened to you?
you look sad and stunned and pale
where nobody talks to him
nobody asks him
Oh! how are you? how are you? what happened to you?
The man who cries
think
I have a dumb wind
unfaithful snow charge
transshipment lying sands
I decked myself with footprints and grooves
relics of broken loves so what?
And that?
The man who cries
he no longer eats, he no longer drinks
he no longer writes but the poem
the poem of the man who cries
the poem of the man who cries
And this fucking love letter
FERNANDO J. ELIZONDO-GARZA (Monterrey, Mexico, 1954).
Swallow it
Swallow all this life
enjoy exterminating
likely to be
in an unwritten destination
but what happened
from generation to generation
between privacy
and congratulation's.
Swallow without fuss
don't be disgusted
those genetic records,
that although fleetingly
they will fill you, they will pass
well nothing remains
more than the memory.
Swallow your hopes
unlikely to exist
in that release
playful and joyful
what did you squeeze
of your lord
take all the flow
and closes the rite.
RUBÉN MEDINA (Mexico City, Mexico, 1955).
Little dance
You look me in the eye
and I shudder.
I look at your lips
and you blush.
You look at my chest
and jump.
I look at your neck
and sigh.
Then we close our eyes
and we go for these
small towns
midwestern
North American
living
groping,
to 35 fires
per hour.
IVÁN TREJO (Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 1978).
7
they buried
standing / didn't know until
then / they wanted their weight to fall on their feet
unmade / collapsing
and end up sitting as if resting
something / nobody warned / no questions
did / my father had
crooked feet and on them
they buried him / he didn't like to wait
and I was buried standing up.
ESTHER M. GARCÍA (Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 1987).
Lonely woman caring for her mother
Christina Rico Gonzalez
(Saltillo, Coah. 1980 - Zacatecas, Zac. (-))
They say her mother went crazy when she was born
that his father disappeared into a black cloud of uncertainty
I went to the store for cigarettes
"Now I'm coming, I won't be long!" He said and 25 years passed
and never came back
It is still the date that she expects it
dressed as a girl behind the door
behind the reflection of his mother
of all its bitterness
Madness is a silent weapon
Play at not wanting to hurt anyone
more than the sick
but it's a lie
It is a bullet penetrating flesh, opening wounds
leaving unnoticeable traces of blood
about
A gun full of ammunition is his mother
and she for defending love
or by obligation
let his life pass always tied to the same string
mom's madness
that brutalizes her beautifully in the eyes of the neighbors
of relatives
of those who have ever stalked her with passion
and then they were stains on the memory
imprecise blots
Every night his crazy mother howls at the moon
and she kisses the button between her lips
with the fingers of his right hand
Every night is the same thing
the same tune
the same ritual
One howls madness and another marries the pillow
between the sweat of "what if the neighbors and uncles find out?"
And the "What would mom think of me?"
But his mother is no longer
but the abyss of something else
that at the end of a day any one will end up consuming it
also her
MERCEDES ROFFÉ (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1954).
The meeting
If you wait for me
I'll tell you
who are you
-open me
I'm not quite
dead
I am your
MARIANA VACS (Rosario, Argentina, 1967).
Siren
Inside the cenote,
your body is a mermaid and sings.
I listen to your childhood melodies
my muteness is not snub,
is that the air makes rounds in memory
and stake me.
CAROLINA ZAMUDIO (Curuzú Cuatiá, Argentina, 1973).
My dead
I carry my living dead in me.
They come in the morning to be ecstatic in my hand
when they caress luminous
the foreheads of my daughters. You look in the mirror
in my eyes
of a brown more ocher than greenish
peeking enigmatic from the drooping eyelids
of another dead that lives in me
until death do us part.
RODOLFO HÄSLER (Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 1958).
Page one: Monday. The lucid magpie
I have a magpie that looks at everything.
Although elusive, there it is, perhaps a chance,
pulls the strand, a slip when falling
on a mound of Ibirapuera grass.
In wild territory, far from keeping calm
the magpie manifests itself, insists on a flight without a labyrinth,
crosses the ether and cancels the desire by going to the side,
he vanishes for the best place, his judgment in the foliage.
Repeat a jump that is a line, and covers more,
he dupes his handler early.
They celebrate both at the same time, border the saying
always on the verge of losing the chance,
rummaging in soft earth, on damp leaves,
a deep feeling of abandonment.
Page Two: Tuesday
The word magpie: I read it in the mirror.
A smooth cut in the glass, what do you propose?
The image goes through the quicksilver slot
and runs to a subway station, Jabaquara destination.
The statuary shadow of the estates fills the crystalline,
he discovers nothing, only strangeness and pain.
The squawk of a bird,
and one day, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, cloudy,
his intention ceases before the rhythm of the universe.
YOSIE CRESPO (Pinar del Río, Cuba, 1979).
Jessica, 1715
My mother tells me that everything looks alike
to a movie from the seventies
where am i
dressed like olivia newton
in her capacity as daughter lightened and in full light
but in the frame of some wild place
and the most extraordinary thing: fast asleep
and where i'm dancing in images of a revolution
in Egypt
and with a list in my hand of everything that I could love with anger
and where thistooshallpass -like in a dream-
where the poem does not always enter the poem
and where God is not always the perfect creator
but nobody believes that -only me- according to my mother
because somewhere in the brain I refuse to die
and because I have not come here because of my patience
nor through a reset that I can't remember
If I only had a stone or fell suddenly
or as Jessica would say on July 10, seventeen hundred
fifteen: it's time to go back, but where
so let's treat the said thing
like the moan of a log
or like a cloud in a Kardinsky painting
where I the inhabitant -human figure made
Of various materials - now I'm rotting
when there was still a rope left to swing on
and piecemeal or like coming out of death
but higher and without origin
I refuse to be a piece of bone from that one
no rain or at least a drop today
not calm from that calm
not distance from your own body
no shame surrounding your already bare arteries
if at least we knew then that we lived
I would realize and I could believe in -all this-
to at least warn
how to get to that instant of light in space
that lives in your eyes and at night.
YRENE SANTOS (Villa Tapia, Dominican Republic, 1963).
Replay
A game
a reaction
your tongue dies when you touch me
the ink of desire expands
calcining the five points of your face
Laughs
silences
they resonate in the left ear of the bedroom.
MARIANELA MEDRANO (Copey, Dominican Republic, 1964).
Of Witches and Butterflies
It's okay
Let's sit down to define
Pythagoras believed in reincarnation
-I believe in him-
So he's the blue worm of the quiet afternoons
that gets tangled in my skirt
bite into the soft pulp
Believe me, he is the one who comes to me turned into a worm
And me?
I am the voice where the birds start to come from
-Before I was quiet a deformed butterfly on the walls-
After that I was a dragon that sipped its own fire
How I enjoyed the flames
In the mirror of the embers I found the key
the one that God forgot when he made the world
(I must say when the world made it to him)
Poor thing is blind looking for his face
Let's not get lost Let's go back to the wheel
In another point
Head down nodding
I took a chair at the apostles' conference
Birds of omens began to flutter on the ceiling
Close your eyes
spread your legs
silence spills between mouths
splashing stone pillows
I said woman
and all the faces turned
the swords sank until I broke my neck
The daughters of love fell into pieces
the sisters
-the beautiful skulls of the brides with bouquets of orange blossoms-
I turn my face towards this part
The nails start to come out
Ah ... because I am Christ
Do you now understand the mystery of your prayer on the cross?
Father why did you left me?
And I was reborn to this pain of life
to this hunger to this thirst that is not satisfied
This time with a piano frame
The piano circle the music ring
-the greatest orgy of the angels between my legs-
Sitting in the shadows I toasted
with the nectar of my own blood
wood blood this one that hurts
After a while the keyboard became silent as a statue
Then it was necessary to make me
The circle made by me
the one at the helm the one with the raw battles
and the waves that kill
Oh the battle of the cold fields
the fight of the sun and the moon
The judges came to this ceremony
With giggles on the side
The sages already know the winners
I refused to be the star and spat their faces
-It was like passing the caress over a garden of thorns-
Naked they threw me back into the fire
Come to the witch's party
the one who eats lizards to scare idiots
ferment stars of vision to enjoy
licking lips
The one with the mouth of strawberries and sour saliva
than to know the art of death
The one that opens a route with the brush of insomnia
Cheering the coven with songs
Feast of rains thunder and lightning
X-raying your praxis
-reinvention of the world world
world of eyes that do not close
of arms cramming the streets
A crazy generation is possible
let them eat butterflies silabeen nightingales
inventing the way to engender the sun and the moon
The comprehensive restructuring of the universe
in it the seed of the new being that survives the light.
DIANA ARAUJO PEREIRA (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1972).
Of Other words / Outras palavras (RJ: 7Letras, 2008)
Spread to other bodies, to other souls, to other hearts. In the longed-for completeness of forming human maps, harmonic geographies, renowned complicity. Naming oneself when naming the other, this one that we so much need on the noisy scale of living in the air. Stretch out on others to complete the sentence, to make sense and human syntax. The human thing is to go out for other people's names, to configure a little more at each step. Soak up other letters and sounds.
Touching the other, smelling him, emptying himself and filling himself up again in friendship or hatred. Opposite signs of the same intrinsic distressing need. To hate the other is to hate oneself for the inability to be whole.
Smiling the smile of others, crying their own tears: degrees of composition of a common poem.
Loving the other is the ultimate poetry.
CLARISSA MACEDO (Salvador Bahía, Brazil, 1988).
Seven abysses
The soul neighs
in the stable.
Horse male
that gallops trovas
of thought,
swallow the waters
of grass and hay.
There is terror in the winds
of the bruised horse,
that lost breaks,
winged, trenches
and falls like an angel
of torment.
There are mares around
oblivion dishes.
There are wheels and straps
in the violent carriage.
In that mane
of black horseshoes
a horse
sparse-legged:
The seven abysses of life.
MAYDA COLÓN (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1975).
Mother:
I go on the train and it seems an ideal way
to keep warm against the bitterness of winter.
I write because it gives me the certainty
of movement in the cartilages of the hands
as if to die history resulted in the return of the affront
in the singular enumeration of those simple things
that force us to weak gestures,
to the certainty of the shadow under the shadow
or to the colloquium of the forbidden mirror
that is cooked in leap years.
I'm dying
and I feel that I ask myself in the faces
in the counts of the many incomprehensible names
between the orphan pages that the downpour is woven to finally immolate itself
in the certainty of the puddles.
Die of me
I die of this slow suicide of voice that drags me to the absolute sweetness of the compendium
I die of the voices in the conscience of so many scarce poets already in arms
hungry like ferocious wolves from the sinister transfusion of ink.
I die raging with life and barefoot
I die slow, but everything is in order and ready for those little monologues
They say they calm, but they infest paintings like canvases.
I walk the city; Mother, like grass,
with the eyes
I walk and while I die
the immensity of the sky does not rest in its work of disrupting blues to paint the sea.
The sea talks so much, Mother.
I write.
