The following poems come from Rebekah Smith’s forthcoming translation (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020) of Susana Thénon’s 1987 book Ova Completa. Ova Completa is Thénon’s final, most radical collection, and is a virtuosic performance of stylistic innovation, language play, dark humor, and socio-political insight. in her misuse, abuse, breaking, and recreating of language, Thénon confronts her moment in history with derision, discontent, and poetic brilliance. She writes obliquely of femicide, Argentina’s last dictatorship, the war with Britain over the Malvinas / Falkland Islands, the heritage of colonialism, drawing on surrealist tradition to fully inhabit the time and place in which it was written, while maintaining a perspective frame both by humor and terror.
Kikirikyrie
god help us or god don’t help us
or god half help us
or he makes us believe that he’ll help us
and later sends word that he’s busy
or he helps us obliquely
with a pious “help yourself”
or cradles us in his arms singing softly that we’ll pay for it
if we don’t go to sleep immediately
or whispers to us that here we are today and oh tomorrow too
or tells us the story of the cheek
and the one about the neighbor and the one about the leper
and the one about the little lunatic and the one about the mute who talked
or he puts in his headphones
or shakes us violently roaring that we’ll pay for it
if we wake up immediately
or gives us the tree test
or takes us to the zoo to see
how we look at ourselves
or points out an old train on a ghost of a bridge
propped up by posters for disposable diapers
god help us or not or halfway
or haltingly
god us
god what
or more or less
or neither
_____
you
who’ve read Dante in folio
you let yourself drift
through those little drawings
so-called illuminated miniatures
and you swallowed it all
all
from ay
to bi
but it’s a lie
that hellish bin of complications is pure rubbish
made on purpose to make you waste time
calculating in which circle
the bones of your soul
will end up
and you know something?
this famous inferno
has an admirable simplicity
it’s not for nothing, the master’s cunning
you get there and they tell you
you’re free
go ahead and do as you like
Y Vos También
there’s saccharine here
the flock of albatross
or what do I know
I mean about albatross
dollars
about albatrosdollars
I never saw a bird pishing that’s not saying much
the canadians pish even if you don’t see it
and the fish
the fish pish the sea
you’re a poet, no?
or Sappho hecho en Shitland
poetess
don’t you see she’s a woman?
come on woman
and if you don’t get the chance to talk to God
why ask him if I ever
I’ll tell you honestly
in fact
at some time or other I’ve stopped adoring you
but English is more practical
you make plans all over
in other words in the pudenda
do it don’t
and even if you pronounce it poorly
they’ll still understand you
do it don’t
or express yourself with gestures
if you’ve seen how you do it
how you learn to do it
how you don’t get used to
how you make do how you want
it how you
don’t