These poems were originally published in Spanish in Peligro de los labios rojos (AUB, Lima, 2024). Thanks to Teresa Cabrera and Arturo Higa, as well as to Dalmacia Ruiz-Rosas.
I HATE THIS CITY of old bombed-out houses
Where I found you leaving the terrible darkened
Bars
The mist the music and the grime form a paste
That clings and lathers up the streets our bodies
Old dirty gather garbage and newspapers
Burning them
In the doorways of centuries-old cathedrals
While sweet and stinking homosexuals carefully press
The night’s false smile
A bar’s greasy light envelops us
And you read poems while I watch your long black hair
Curling around your ears and back
We laugh at everything walk embracing
Searching at the foot of the cliffs for houses that don’t exist
Among the trashpickers, ambulantes, and microbuses
That like hungry cockroaches pursue us
Coming out of every corner
Until hitting the high point of my hysteria
That needs the refuge of a reddened park
Where the greenest green the true green slips through
Alone
Devoured without wanting it the streets that separate
Your body from my body
With neither a breeze nor your fingers that tousle my hair
And beyond the city blinks viscous repugnant
Like a busted
Fruit.
DURING SUMMER it’s the sun
And the freckles on my arms that you know too
I wash a glass and you outside
In the garden turn your face upward to look at the cypress
I can imagine now that this house is ours
That the glass I am washing belongs to our set
And the cypress to our garden
But the cassette that makes us happy
Is the owner of the house and they aren’t
Exactly us
Back in the living room
Our smiles false
I remain shut up remembering ‘77
When for shouting my dreams aloud they beat my back
And blood came out my nose
And I sought refuge in the house of Jr. Cangallo
While a woman kindly cleaned my blouse
From pain hate fear and frustration
I cried over a cup of tea
You chat you laugh you get in the groove
And sometimes
You stick out your tongue at me red and conic
Like a cat’s dick
LIKE THE MOST DEVIOUS little slutty pamperita
You smile
At the interprovincial travelers
Wanting to see
The sea
That later will silently sleep
In their lungs
The loneliness and the cold
Will oblige them to plant words
In the ears of the homosexuals and the prostitutes
Who dwell in the Parque Universitario at midnight
Waiting for the Man
With the sideways, oily pupils.
On the corners they’ll find clusters
Of kids dead from hunger
The length of the avenues
Rows of assault guards
A green note
To this old lover of viceroys.
78 10:00 pm 25-5-78 10:00 pm 25-5-78 10:00 pm 25-5-
Oh if Marx were beside me to see
That today the Moon didn’t hide itself for fear of my beauty.
They’ve put a cap on my wanting to be
With the young guy with the black curly hair
And an unattainable price on the power of being called by his name
I am the girl who offers you her smile
The final beer of summer
Shooting and snarling sign that my time will be up early
They separate me from you
—tears in eyes hands in pockets—
I know your room I know the way I have the money
But the murderer and Modigliani wait for me on every corner
Could you please gift me your white kerchief?
YOU CRY
Though do you know the world’s saddest story?
For Cilette
I’ve gotten used to seeing you
In every size
According to the rainy seasons
Or the sunny ones
We could find ourselves with just small potatoes
In our stomachs for days
Around the Cuatricentenaria we gathered
Dirty little coins to buy cigarettes
On Av. Mac Gregor
Contemplating little stuffed up asses
We loved our women until we were satisfied
The city center’s streets bite at our ankles
Bring us the morning the people attack us they want us
Hey mister
Hey mister
Shoeshines
To live is subversive.
Routes and Presages
Of the poets
After having purged his ignorance in hell
He didn’t feel that the sound of my skin was profane
Where’s that little park
That we went to and never went back
To again?
Something hurt in the penumbra
What loneliness when he went to the Moon
Goodbye Moon blue melon
Shipwrecking devil
Leave me to breathe
That brindled honeysuckle
The sound they murmur to me:
20 of Góngora
3 of Lope
Of the communes
Walking through the city center at four in the afternoon
All day the same whine
A weekend serene
We left for the balnearios hung from the cliff
For that hotel, its terraces giving out over the Pacific.
The tattoos of the night phosphoresce
The names that blink in the sky are strange
The night skies illuminate our vast square of madness
Let’s stone the stars
Snap the cables
Walking the dunes at four in the afternoon
With the sun at our backs
The motors humming in our ears
The caterpillar pulling up the dreams of thousands of inhabitants by the roots
A young girl sticks the end of her foot in the sand
While her rage fills her eyes
To feel fear of those who are the government
In the city that we build ourselves
We launch fireworks into the sky
And they rain rocks down on our heads.
The image is still fresh of the six compañeros
Falling inert from a factory roof
Over every city street
Another seventy bodies
In prolix proclamation.
The poet calls out to the servants’
Uprising.
I know / The day will come
When the sun won’t flog our backs
We will make love
Without being tired
We’ll have an ice-cold lemonade in the desert.
IN THE SUMMER heat
Reading
LAS SOBRAS COMPLETAS
Of a minor poet
In one of the parks most unworldly and deserted
Where the sky is lit but not from light
The monoxide the cars belch from the mouth of
Calle
Grau
The heaps of trash that circle the curb
The raucous music from the mobile discos
Compete in misfortune with the desperate shouts
From the vendors beggars and number runners.
Like the kids’ paper kites
A blue wall—it rises, horrible
ETERNAL GLORY TO THE SCHOOLKID MARTYRS
And below in an infantile scrawl
MORALES SON OF A BITCH
THOSE WHO ONCE LAUGHED at us
Have been buried
Under the weight of infamy
Their lies only served
To reaffirm our truths
To those that vacillated we will say
That they lost Apollo’s
Chariot / They couldn’t reach the bussing / There’s no room at the bottom
And to all of them
In English, that universal language
Of ignorance:
GOOD BYE
SO LONG
GO HOME
Oh OLD AND DECREPIT Sra. Guillé
The walls become windows
On hearing the incessant smack
Of your sandals
Such inconsequence
From love to most absolute hate
And we know ourselves scared and alone
And it is at the guardian of miserable treasures
That we the fake abnormals
Now level our suspicions
Of timid smiles in the halls.
To: Mario Pimentel; Antonio Cisneros
This afternoon I saw it rain
Rocks sticks water from the police van
I SAW PEOPLE RUNNING
Blocking roads stoning tanks
AND YOU WEREN’T THERE
In the fields, in the factory
But
In the street
Agitating
THIS AFTERNOON I SAW A BLUE LIGHT SHINING
The ambulance light
The red light of the patrol cars
AND YOU WEREN’T THERE
In love with me
But
In the street
Pursued
I DON’T KNOW IF YOU LOVE ME IF YOU WANT ME OR MISS ME
In state security
Tortured
I ONLY KNOW THAT I SAW IT RAIN
Rocks sticks water from the police van
I SAW PEOPLE RUNNING
Blocking roads stoning tanks
AND YOU WEREN’T THERE
You’re not here anymore.
THE PLACE WHERE WE LOVED looks like a convent
Watched over by army trucks the river
The market and the government palace some greasy spoons and bars
And we in those few moments we’ve got left
Smoking a cig
We are who we are and it doesn’t feel real to me
The water that brushes us lacks violence
We’re wrapped in fascinating colors
For a moment the sky opens its gates
That was the assault.
THE TRADE ISN’T some tube of ointment
To be advertised on women’s programs
It’s proscribed by its home
It laughs at its face and its jacket.
It’s that mild pain in the left side
Its husband feels.
It travels by microbus tumbles
Holes up in hotels doesn’t have a passport.
It’s a kiss of mist
It comes out in little bubbles
From the mouths of forgotten drunks.
Poetry – we are it
Me and my boy clutching our bellies
Laughing
Until we double over.
Translated by Judah Rubin
I’M SURE that if I stand up to get a book
my ovaries will fall out
They’ll roll out
of my room toward the garden
They won’t stop until they’re resting against the pine tree where my dogs will find them
and start to play with them
I’m sure that when I get out of your car I’ll kick my head far away
My feet will want to stay outside the house
because it’s a long walk to my room
And my right arm
will be hanging from the keychain.