Tr. Alexis Almeida
The Big Projects
The big projects, friends …
The big projects,
are actually gigantic.
The big projects at 2:21 in the morning.
Friends, do you know what I mean?
The big projects.
Those big, big projects
where we invest feeling and desire.
Anyway,
those big projects
are so lovely
so so beautiful
we waste so much time
and anyway …
the big projects.
Never forget them.
The big projects,
The big projects.
Happiness
Happiness should be written
with 1,000,000 erupting volcanos
on the grass
on the sky.
It should be written with a single moving letter
on contact corpuscles
between blankets
and a particular kind of light
half-gone.
With the paws of a cheetah
on the ground
without leaving a trace
waking up seeds
and the trampled grass.
I’m alert like an animal.
Alert
with my eyes closed
waiting for her to take me.
Everything Very Small
You have to split the rocks with a hammer
and crack open the walnuts and the almonds.
You have to open the acrylics in the middle
and divide the fabrics into smaller pieces.
You have to leave while splitting things
like dividing ideas into parts so they become unrecognizable.
Splitting memories into very small pieces
at least right now.
Everything very small
and then mixing up all the pieces on a table
to let the wind in
and after you’ll sweep them up
and start again.
The Sun Over the Sun
That everything is seen
the sun over the sun
over a sun over the sun.
That the red luminous signs of the body
burst into bubbles are
over the sun over the sun.
That the life of my paintings triumph,
pink, lilac, cinnamon skin
over loneliness and pain
over the sun that is above the sun of the sun.
That my mind escapes to something flat
where the sun over the sun shines.
The sun of the sun
over the sun, over the sun.
The sun that shines on the sun.
Over the Sun of the Sun
There’s always a sun over the sun
and another sun inside the sun.
I look at the fixed ceiling and see these amazing things.
I see the sun through the sheets and the clouds.
I align myself with the straight line of alignments
and I don’t think about anything else.
The ceiling over the ceiling of clouds.
I go back and forth in the channel of belief
and idealize suffering like it’s cold seawater over rocks.
The ceiling becomes transparent like the clouds
and the sun is over me.
I’m not in the world
I’m over the sun of the sun.
Words I Used Most in My Literary Life
I
but
and
why?
alone
sad
you
direction
side
Ahh…
Ohh…
head
him
her
eyes
difficult
with myself
myself
heart
bed
don’t ask me
I don’t know
I believe
I can
children
mind
planet
reality
movement
noise
love
mind
mom
I should
fantasy
to fly
I feel
strange
local
walking
street
night
I mean
I scream
happy
for me
for you
sadness
happiness
happens
poetry
bad
sleep
I pray
arms
skirt
fairies
goodbye
good
they are
magic
god
hands
time
insanity
mistaken
house
virgin
fear
poem
contented
what there is
Yes
today
hmm?
example
thousands
would like
crazy
write
life
beautiful
party
tears
happens
weak
things
instant
intensity
I eat
a little
reality
I want
I drink
I fall
a lottttt
you
face
there
forgotten
black
bored
presence
light
kisses
floor
moon
song
brain
cry
make it
nothing
shame
people
A Transparent Film
That’s how flowers are born
Did you know this?
lilac and pink ones
with brown pistils that smell like incense.
They’re born this way because you ask
to be able extend yourself
and defeat what scares you, the tears
or to be able to enjoy the day.
That’s why this text is for you
Because to be written it needed light,
the light of a devastating fire.
A dead heart
is a solid cement house
instead we live outdoors.
Unplugging the tv
the silence of the crickets
corners us against tomorrow
it’s impossible to avoid.
A friend told me life is also surprising.
And I told him you’d said this too
and when we think this way
it’s because we’re forgetting everything that’s happening to us.
When a heart is convulsing
with whatever emotion
there’s a moment where the blood stops.
It’s like the silence of the television,
momentary
but definitive.
Explaining things becomes pointless
especially when you don’t know what to say,
that’s why you might decide to stoke these passions.
A bridge,
and a little garden game,
a black armchair with a golden cup holder
a green terrace wrapped in cellophane.
A hammock, a grill
and the grease slurped up by the dog.
The winter, your birthdays, the spring,
Books, shirts.
Our skin is a transparent film
that contains everything,
all that was left,
like us
and all our things
and creatures that are no longer here.
A transparent film that contains everything
and lets you see it
with all the insanity the word “everything” brings.
Fernanda Laguna (1972, Hurlingham, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is an artist, writer, curator, editor, cultural activist, housewife, and bisexual. She grew up with a very strict catholic education, which she abandoned with the stroke of a pen when she entered Prilidiano Pueyrredón School of Fine Arts where she became a drawing and painting teacher. In 1999 she founded the gallery, giftshop, and cultural center Belleza y Felicidad; in 2003 she opened an art school in Villa Fiorito, a neighborhood on the edge of the city. After ByF she opened four other art spaces. Her work has been acquired by various museums around the world and she has shown work in bar bathrooms and galleries with glowing white walls. Her 2020 book Amor total compiles all her visual work from the 90s. Running parallel to her visual and curatorial work is Laguna's literary work: three books of poetry and four novels from her parallel "I" Dalia Rosetti.
Alexis Almeida is the author of I Have Never Been Able to Sing (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018), and her co-translation of Carlos Soto Román's 11 is forthcoming from UDP later this year. Recent work has appeared or is coming in Harp & Alter, The Poetry Project, BOMB, Rainbow Agate, Neck, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, where she teaches at the Bard Microcollege at the Brooklyn Public Library and edits 18 Owls Press.