for M, with all of my anguish
this is my anguish:
4 am. waking to drink coffee
take pills
two by two.
inhaling / exhaling
Against the window
Toward the east.
To pee
To not even smoke
fighting the exhaustion.
testing the water. too cold.
five minutes the water’s still too cold.
still.
looking at the clock.
five more minutes. in front of the sink.
I scrub my arms. one more minute. cracked.
against the ceramic.
I’m cracked
subject to the search for the sublime
in search of emotion in the everyday
damp I hold on to
the rhythm of my days
the regime of physical health more-or-less militant
far less metaphysical
--you get it--
others don’t interest me in
the slightest
I keep rubbing hinges scrubbing porcelain
mopping the floor
I keep boiling vegetables crushing garlic
I keep folding shirts
I keep
the trash far from the groceries
the WC far from the groceries
my heart far from the groceries
clean cholesterol
lean meat
I keep
my intimacy
bland
I keep
il mio dolore
il mio cuore
I keep
a question disturbing my routine
what keeps
my imbecilic heart
unhungry?
this is my anguish:
LONELINESS IS A SCANDAL
this is my hunger:
I want everything
Everything’s circular when decaying
nel passare dei giorni
everything is fickle
everything is cramped
everything is terror
everything is else
everything is sacred
everything is muscular
everything absolutely everything is filled with fog
nel passare delle notti
everything is omitted
everything exerts its weight
everything is in its place
everything counts as evident
nel corso degli anni
EVERYTHING
seems superficial
EVERYTHING IS DESCRIPTION
everything is conviction quando scopiamo
all visual contact made difficult quando scopiamo
quando scopiamo
when you get me off
everything seems to overflow
everything is senseless
EVERYTHING
lacks measure
EVERYTHING is lucidity everything
has sores
everything is bony
everything runs out
everything overwhelms
everything absolutely everything weighs
con il passare delle ore
everything is circular
when decaying
everything is colorless
everything is silence
everything is dull
everything is slack
everything disgusts me
everything has a limit:
I barely crawl toward it and I want
everything to end
I censor all satisfaction
I leave every expression
every extension
every word
to the side
I abandon everything
this is my illness:
countering and distorting
blindspots
LIVING WITH FEAR sleeping an entire youth
in hospitals
doesn’t mean anything
nothing like
training in the small pleasure of teaching philosophy and repeating
that myth passes into science
and science into the domain of nature and aberrant
reason
foreign I would say
nothing like
raising birds
to not anticipate the cold nor the metal
to name them
to bleed when they bleed
to love them like one loves a child
nothing like
twisting necks
like going to therapy
LIVING BESIDE THE SEA
means adopting some things that one could recount
let’s say:
redemption
rehabilitation
production reproduction
calm
decaffeinated coffee
silence
silence
pace silenzio
a thousand daily calories
seven hours of sleep
four clear memories of the civil war
three sexual partners at a minimum
that is the weight of my fortune
that will have to be my life
TO LIVE BESIDE THE SEA
functional and invertebrate
this is my weapon:
I don’t like images nor the sea
nor sex —and really not sex—
I don’t know how to swim
I don’t have an imagination I don’t know how to take care of plants
I can’t make little ones grow tall
In the heart of a landscape
I don’t have a vocation
heightened desires can’t grow
in the middle of a man
I don’t have desire
I don’t believe in a sense of desperation
I don’t believe in a sense of time
I don’t believe in a sense of beauty
WHAT DO I HAVE TO HOPE FOR?
my figures are apathetic
my words are simple
I’m occupied today with distancing myself from excess
this is my privacy:
prima scena della mia fuerza
moves me profoundly
the strength of the ligaments
the strength of the ligaments in human development of what we understand as
coming and going
it moves me profoundly the contra natura
the difficulty of visual contact as
sign of civilization afloat
the strength of the cornea before the light
moves me
white light of the apartments put up
in the middle of the real estate boom
accompanying symptom to the gastronomic boom
and the anatomy of the kitchens built first in the houses
circa 1980 and the pre-fab kitchens circa
their debut year
it moves me profoundly the action of the other let’s say
climbing down from the apple trees let’s say, apple trees
being australopithecines
to fuck let’s say fuck
—let’s not say “fornicate” which is totally dissonant—
to fuck on the kitchen titles
to fuck in the household grease
the fortitude moves me this kitchen’s mold moves me
I think of its forms
encroaching on this house’s cement
this fortified house
I think of the strength of this body’s
knees
a sick body and not strength but
damp
in this house
there’s only
a tired body
inchoate
invaded by the fastness del tuo sesso
in questa cocina precariat
I think or rather try to make sense of
the material whole:
palpable
the shame of these years
of my discarded life
I try to make sense of
il mio cuore
il mio dolore
I try to comprehend
the strength of my anguish
NOTHING SAVES ME LIKE A LANGUAGE I DON’T UNDERSTAND
it’s like that
prima scena
prima scena della mia caduta
between everything that can exist
the history of all of humanity itself
the things that move men
to do things
whatever’s most moving, I accept it
an abandoned house
a worn-out body
Valeria Román Marroquín (Arequipa, Peru) has published the poemarios Feedback (Poesía Sub25, 2016), Matrioska (Fondo Editorial APJ, 2018), Triza La Luz (Meir-Ramírez, 2020) and ana c. buena (La Balanza, 2021) as well as the shorter works kriegzsustand (self-published, 2017) and angst (Fondo Editorial PUCP, 2018). She is the 2017 winner of the Premio Nacional de Poesía José Watanabe Varas and of the Premio Luces 2018 for best volume of poetry.