Picking scabs / Arrancando costras

I like to pick scabs. There is something morbidly delicious about ripping the dark pieces of coagulated blood off my skin. Beyond the repulsion, there is something soothing on the oxymoron of leaving raw skin exposed, something that makes me feel alive and chastised about feeling the ache, and the burn and the unequivocal feeling that I deserve to suffer because I went ahead and picked that scab.

Oddly enough, this is not the worst part. This is not the part I feel embarrassed about. Even though I sadly admit that Mom was right about telling me to leave my skin alone, when I look at the scar hieroglyphs of my body.

Oh no. This isn't the worst part.

My shame lies on the fact that I create scabs. I make myself bleed in order to have a scab to pick.

I couldn't believe there is actually a name for this: dermatillomania.

You may not see the worst, because my worst wounds are hidden under my hair. If I ever lose it all you'd find my head is a map.

You, among the world are the only one that knows this (before this confession). You know it, not just because you stop my idle hand creeping up to my head before I realize it. You know it not because you have seen my naked flagellated back. You know it not because you figured out there is something under my epidermis that demands a daily blood sacrifice.

You know it because the worst wounds I make sure to leave forever raw, forever bleeding, are those of my heart.

You keep wondering when I will let go, of something you didn't say, of something you didn't do.

I have a natural tendency to always bleed.

A vicious and resentful memory.

But last night I let you touch me.

Because I need you to dig your fingers in my wounds, your hand to search for something in the gash of my side.

So you'll see me, so you'll believe... once more.

_____________

Me gusta arrancar costras. Hay algo mórbidamente delicioso en arrancar oscuros pedazos de sangre coagulada de mi piel. Más allá de la repulsión, hay algo calmante en el oxímoron de dejar la carne viva expuesta, algo que me hace sentir viva y castigada por sentir el dolor, y el ardor y el inequívoco sentimiento de que merezco sufrir porque lo hice, porque me arranqué esa costra.

Extrañamente, esta no es la peor parte. Esta no es la parte de la que me avergüenzo. Aunque tristemente tengo que admitir que Mamá tenía razón al decirme que me dejara en paz la piel, al mirar los jeroglíficos de cicatrices en mi cuerpo.

Oh no. Ésta no es la peor parte.

Mi vergüenza está en que creo costras. Me hago sangrar para tener una costra que arrancarme.

No podía creer que existiera un nombre para esto: dermatilomania.

No podrán ver lo peor, porque las peores heridas están bajo mi cabello. Si algún día lo pierdo verán que mi cabeza es un mapa.

Tú, entre todo el mundo eres el único que conoce esto (antes de esta confesión). Tú lo sabes, no porque detengas mi mano ociosa avanzando furtivamente a mi cabeza antes de que me dé cuenta. Tú lo sabes no porque hayas visto mi desnuda espalda flagelada. Tú lo sabes no porque hayas descubierto que hay algo bajo mi epidermis que demanda un diario sacrificio sangriento.

Tú lo sabes, porque las peores heridas que me aseguro de dejar por siempre vivas, por siempre sangrando, son ésas de mi corazón.

Sigues preguntándote cuando lo dejaré que muera, algo que no dijiste, algo que no hiciste.

Tengo una tendencia natural a sangrar siempre.

Una cruel y resentida memoria.

Pero anoche te dejé tocarme.

Porque necesito que entierres tus dedos en mis heridas, que tu mano busque algo en la incisión de mi costado.

Para que finalmente me veas, para que me creas... una vez más.

Poema de doble lectura / Double-reading poem

The next minimalist poem has the particularity of being, at the same time, both English and Spanish. A poem not to be translated.

Este próximo poema minimalista tiene la particularidad, al mismo tiempo, de ser tanto

inglés como español. Un poema para no traducirse.

------------------------------------


Crater

explosion

lava
come


Lunar
eclipse


Alfa
Omega


Big
Bang


Cosmos

Blogged with the Flock Browser

I am too close / Estoy demasiado cerca

Once again you sleep while I stay awake.

Once again I write to you expecting no reply.

Once again I wish we spoke a common code.

I write to you in the language I wasn't born to speak.

Because you asked me to, because I hope one day you'll be able to find my voice in foreign words...

Once again I quote W. Szymborska as one of those nights at the beginning:

The endless night of my exile.

----------

I am too close for him to dream of me.
Estoy demasiado cerca para que él sueñe conmigo
[...]
I am too close, too close, I hear the word hiss and see its glistening scales as I lie motionless in his embrace.
Estoy demasiado cerca, demasiado cerca, escucho el siseo de la palabra y veo sus relucientes escamas mientras languidezco inmóvil en su abrazo.
He's sleeping, more accessible at this moment to an usherette he saw once in a traveling circus with one lion, than to me, who lies at his side.
Él duerme, más a la mano de una cajera que vio una sola vez en un circo ambulante con un solo león, que de mí que yazco a su lado.
[...]
My cry could only waken him.
Mi llanto sólo podría despertarlo.
And what a poor gift: I, confined to my own form, when I used to be a birch, a lizard shedding times and satin skins in many shimmering hues. And I possessed the gift of vanishing before astonished eyes, which is the richest of all.
Y qué presente más pobre: Yo, confinada a mi propia forma, cuando solía ser abedul, lagarto que se despojaba de tiempos y de satinadas pieles en tantos lucientes colores.
Y yo poseía el don de desaparecer de sus asombrados ojos, la mayor riqueza.
I am too close, too close for him to dream of me.
Estoy demasiado cerca, demasiado cerca para que él sueñe conmigo
I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head -it's numb, swarming with imaginary pins. A host of fallen angels perches on each tip, waiting to be counted.
Saco mi brazo que yace bajo su cabeza dormida -entumido, zumbando con alfileres imaginarios. Un puñado de ángeles caídos en cada punta, aguardan a ser contados.

La traducción es mía. Aunque exista ya una versión en español quería escribir una versión que sonara a mí.

Poems you will definitely not see at Poetry Magazine / Los poemas que no leerán en inglés en la revista Poetry

So the folks at Poetry Magazine "are grateful for the opportunity to read my poetry" but will not be publishing my poems. There goes my opportunity for my in-laws to believe I am truly a poet. No biggie. One of these days I may see my name in print in the "good old US of A". In the meantime, I'm writing them here, Why? Well, why not?

The Conquest

You were not looking for God’s unspeakable name on my body,
the skillful stroke of his ideogram on my face.
It was not my blood the spelling charm,
nor the ability for creation of my word what you were looking for.

For you I was only the ship
that soon you’d give to the fire.

You were only looking for
scented cardamom and ginger routes,
silky mulberry paths,
green tea-leaves and aji treasures;
and to hoist yourself proud
not fearing the fall from Earth’s precipice,
like a child who believes that the world burns out
when he closes his eyes.

You needed my tongue:
divine breath that on the first day
they blew in my mouth,
to open the scroll of secret routes
that ancient shamans hid
in each one of the thousand maids.

It was necessary to learn my speech,
but you only learned suckling from my breast.
Only under my sheets during the torrid nights
your sweaty fingers learned to decode hieroglyphs.

And you were suckered into believing
that only your mighty pen
would awaken this barbaric glossary.

You believed that only your ardent kiss
would ignite the gunpowder
that I,
silly me,
used to mix with water to make ink.

That only your hands would know how to open the book.

And that only in your land they give a man spade and quill
and they command him,
as Adam before,
to name all the new things,
that only two steps ahead are created
for his selfish wonder.

But they didn’t tell you that silent volcanoes don’t sleep,
they remain boiling,
always on the lookout.

Erastes, eromenos

They say that in ancient times the enjoyment of male flesh by virile lips
was the unique source for the knowledge of the gods.
Today you may undo yourself trying to prove that you’ve never tasted such delicacy,
but you keep the orchard fenced-in,
and only among rival virilities the fruit of knowledge is served.

But I, subversive, dared to learn
from the one who didn’t want to teach me
(openly)
beyond the scream of the paper ripping.

I was born stone furrow,
with flesh formed only under the chisel.

No one rushed to hit me to make me speak.

I can’t conceive coarse artisan hands creating the world,
when even before anyone dared to eat,
my hands already kneaded the fruit until it bled:
food of immortals.

I had to prove that I could self-immolate for my child offense,
your terror of not finding your beloved instrument in between my legs;
how eager my hands tasted my foreign ribs,
agonizing to be clean slate,
unknown stone.

I sewed my lips with silence so I wouldn’t horrify you with the shape of my sex.
And every night I had to repeat my litany of not speaking of pain nor children’s cries.

And I had to cut the constant flow of salt
of this great house that leaks even during drought.

All my effort was on the search for a phallus to give to my letter,
dreaming about inventing a binary alphabet
that would hide away my Siamese formula.

A man loves his neighbor in order to instruct him,
however,
he does not love a woman but to learn through her unawareness.

When you spoke of your imaginary crusades,
when you evaded my questions born out of my tormented naiveté,
with my ridiculous and amused desire
(the same you never found lucrative to exploit)
I learned many secrets,
everything your tender flesh ignored:
a bounty of trivialities.

I have built my room with stolen things,
and I no longer hide my natural drive to possess.

While you want to sweep under the dust
that I did not offer your body away to save myself.

I do not wait with desperation by the door,
fearing you may come to claim your baggage,
they are all things lost in a long and heated journey,
things buried down in a lost and found that no one misses.

Instead, I patiently care for the box,
tied up with my meticulous nostalgia
and the silk ribbon I finally ripped off my tireless wound.


I have started to doubt
this intelligent design,
not because I am unable to believe,
stubbornly,
in a figurative speech.

But because you gave to me:
no sense of space,
the credibility of reptiles,
curves that his hands
had to touch in order to believe,
and the ability to learn
only through my errors.

Another story tells
that you tried everything more than once,
and that every failed pot
could not utter your name.

That you were a father
only when he gave you the term,
just as I
carry the name of his lust.
That in every place you searched for matter
to give him flesh.
you played with textures,
with materials.

And that only until he shouted your name
you didn’t think that what was made
was good.

I don’t know if really I come from him,
because I don’t feel
like perfected creature.

I identify myself more with your mistakes,
with the abject that is mixed again with the dough
to try once more.

Let him boast a little more
of being your beloved son,
your chosen people.

I want to be the instrument of your leaning.


You only possessed my mouth to silence me,
to strangle my breath.

On the great house threshold
you let me touch your intact chest,
and count the perfect number of your ribs,
and before you left you thanked me for
each one of my six failed spells,
smug about ruining,
forever,
any possible communication between us.

I did not want to sleep
trapped under your weight,
I wanted to walk around attached to you by the hip.

I never fed you,
and I couldn't make you eat,
word by word,
my poetry.

I forgot to write on your wide forehead
the magical word that could protect me.

No charm grew on my chest,
to stop your big child hand
that kneaded, in amazement,
my heart
(or at least my left breast)

With cruel and childish frenzy
you crumpled it
until it spoke no more,
and later,
prone to boredom,
you threw it away
with the rest of the guts of the slaughter house beasts.