from Santiago Waria (1992)

NN

like arms and legs numb

like some doll decapitated

like that hand broken in pieces with tendons in the air

like a dead eye and another foggy glass one

like a mannequin from a junk store

                                         or a stiff dress
like that mess from Patio 29

like the grayish swaying that drags itself



                             we walk through Santiago
                             and perhaps this doesn’t matter


 Ñona all over the place 

at breakfast time, in the micros in a hurry in the National Hymn rampant
and sonorous, clinging to the windows like stickers,
on the buildings and balconies, from north to south, going up and
coming down the elevators, in the kindergartens

they put it in song in the heart of the Sagrada Familia, between their
defenders and detractors, between apolitical politicians and plastic coat
scientists

they pulled it out with pliers from the pores of the theoretical artistic and
literary avant-garde

they collect it with shovels in the Ministry of Defense and other
indefinable ministries, from the bars and hospitals, they remove it from
under eyelids and tongues, from the zoo, from the sacristies, and from all
the media without exception

democracy launched it with a fan, without resolving it indeed,
and it’s in the air, in the oaths, in freshly made love,
in the recipients of ideas, in burning patience,
here and in the middle of nowhere

 our daily bread

 


Other, he, the same

man that crossed the avenue and became lost
                             in a revolving door
                 the very same infected with otherness
                             or dressed in that suit
                                                     in addition to a silence
                 a talk-your-head-off talker
                                         shaded/brilliant
his pure intellectualism taken to the mechanical scale
that one
                 with bite marks on his lips and in his eyes
     swells of postmodernism: the empty box
                 yes, a sad tie tottering
                             and he drank several beers without noticing
                                                                             the foam
                 he was in the mirror and his flesh didn’t exist
                                         unrecognizable
                             prince and Mr. Nobody, Other
                                         bargain frotteur
                             an atom lost in the crowd
                                                     orphan 


Patron: You’re at home
                 this no man’s land
                             and in confidence
lose your head for a while if you live
                 to break it

Dear human beast
                 monolith of tattered sex
                             make a pact with the devil here
                                         in Mancia de los Nidos

 Juan Mauro Bío-Bío sings a couplet and
                                                    a drink
The Public Woman No. 1 makes a close-out sale
                                                     of her merchandise
The Man of Bidding Street arranges
                                                     his moustache

                              Together we go down the wide boulevards
                                                    of the happy life

                                                     (to be continued)


Que sera

we haven’t passed beyond the level of the alphabet
     that we flood in the mound of the short phrase
                 pushing the letter for all its worth
- do we want it to come by blood? –
     I can’t explain such ceremony
- is it alright already to walk with stilts through the streets?
     I don’t buy the small screen menu
     although I keep paying for eggs at the crossroads 

que sera
gadget or enchantment

 


Rhesus macacus

                                         and the children of Man

                 race     and      reason

     Retzius

                                                   rhizomes 

                             raids

 

     put on the suit of the universal man

and “The Voice of Blood” dear Magritte 

     the Mapuches their heart doesn’t rot friend



                             the blood pulls down

     “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

 

Translator’s note:  The title NN refers to “Nomen Nescio” – name unknown; used to refer to disappeared people during the dictatorship. Ñona, in the second poem, is slang for crap or shit.

 

Elvira Hernández (b. Lebu, Chile, 1951), pseudonym of María Teresa Adriasola, is a Chilean poet, essayist, and literary critic. She is one of the most important voices of contemporary poetry in the Southern Cone and the Chilean neo-avant-garde (also known as the Escena de avanzada) although she eschews such categorical markers. Her most recent book of poetry is THE CHILEAN FLAG (Kenning Editions, 2019), translated by Alec Schumacher. Some of her most important works include Pájaros desde mi ventana (2018), Actas urbe (2016), Cuaderno de deportes (2010), Cultivo de hojas (2007), Álbum de Valparaíso (2002), Santiago Waria (1992), El orden de los días (1991), La bandera de Chile (1991), Carta de Viaje (1989), Meditaciones físicas por un hombre que se fue (1987), and ¡Arre! Halley ¡Arre! (1986). Recently, she was the recipient of the Jorge Tellier National Poetry Award (2018) and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award (2018).

Alec Schumacher (b. 1983, Green Bay, USA) received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017 and is currently assistant professor of Spanish at Gonzaga University. His research focus is on Chilean poets of the neo-avant-garde, in particular, Juan Luis Martínez and Elvira Hernández. He has translated poetry by Jorge Arbeleche for Drunken Boat and recently published his translation of Elvira Hernández’s La bandera de Chile with Kenning Editions.