The first version of this poem
was written in memory
the percussion that gives way to depth
that which by force of contact is relief
I retain words like blows and I give form
I repeat and forge this prehistoric basin
in my mouth the movement of the wide and noiseless tongue
remembers the time of the cariniana, the larch and the cypress
The second version I wrote in blood
with my fingers materially mine
my most palpable I
before extending the skin or amputating the gaze
Before the deforestation of the original forests
of the confetti collected beneath the furniture
of the toothbrush in the throat and the hundreds of kilos
of food abandoned on the streets of Manhattan
Before the pneumoconiosis from inhaling carbon dust
the atmospheric pollution and sterility
The third version is a lightning bolt a flicker
On the screen
A codified writing, incomprehensible and miraculous
It is the interface the translation and the rough amplitude
In which I inquire after what of me there is on this page
There is an inside and an outside
there is always an inside and an outside
and an impenetrable border in their flow
There is porosity too
a finger in the flesh indicates
the smoldering belly of the machine
the shadows that lengthen and are confused with
the color of dust safe from the drones’ precise surveillance
There is a porosity in the agents’ fatigue
In their reddened eyes
and in the almost perfect alteration of the document
in the dogs, too, and in the metal detectors
Like physicists that break matter down
in search of elemental particles
there are those who dig and refuse to believe in the hardness
where others say Stop they see little orifices
transparency in the striated membrane
They remain in the weave, probing until finding the
skin thinned and permeable
Asphyxiation
Like five grams of plastic per week
I take mine with my pores my tongue at the rhythm of my breath
Microscopic particles come off my clothes
are freed in the washer’s dirty water
invade the city the pipes the rivers
That I feed with the delirium of anatomies
traversed by pinpoints
with imperceptible but mortal wounds
I’m at risk
a sweet and brilliant risk like a canned fruit
like its roundness
I have tumors the colors of polystyrene
polypropylene
polyurethane
and vinyl polychloride balls
The procession enters and death
is a ball pit
minimal silhouettes of whales stranded
in the folds
in the lack of space that lets the oxygen pass
it arrives
at the infested lungs
not with emissions or smog
but with insignificant threads
like words to warn of the devastation
words that don’t stick in the throat where the air doesn’t
throat without vibration without sound
hollow fleshiness without contingency
long contingency unpronounceable
and at the point of being extinguished