María Auxiliadora Álvarez
Born 1956 in Caracas of a Spanish family. Studied Fine Arts and worked as a designer a. At present she is lecturing in Latin American Poetry
And Literature at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Her first books of poems: Cuerpo, 1985; Ca(z)a, 1990, gives a devastating account
of the pain and humiliation of childbirth. Other books are Pompeya, 1996; Inmóvil, 1996; El eterno aprendiz - Resplandor, 2006.
El Celacanto, 1980; Acrimonia, 1980; De Amantes, 1984; Sombraduras, 1987; El Auroch, 1992.
Spanish Text
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i could have saved up
the money doctor
bitter eunuch cow attacking me
to be given better attention
your eye kept longer on me
if being pregnant lasted several years
as i got more and more inflamed
each time i retched
each hair that fell
each stretch mark
i would have put it by
remembering
your slobber
bloody white gown
because i work hard
corrosive cow slobber white gown attacking me
i would have saved it up
from when i was a child
if i'd had some small inflammation
to show me
at the same time as you were studying
i'd have been counting it
down there
between my haunches
where you are looking for it now
your white eunuch slobber
wouldn't have been soiled
with my watery shreds
son butcher organ stud
i could have saved up
the money doctor
because i work very hard
bitter gown white cow
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mama is a black animal
tame
wide
she smells
of stagnant waters
she breeds
sweet frogs
in her gums
she doesn't eat
doesn't sleep
doesn't laugh
she's a dark space
that I run my tongue over
and it tastes of semen
blood
tadpole water
mama is a quiet animal
bound
swollen
habitual
dead
that total afternoon
death rattling afternoon i looked for you
among the bodies
among the spasmodic bundles
and no one was there
unaffected
by big dark belly by vagina
by slow bloody bare foot
by fearful eye
such a conditional companion
there was no one full of scrutiny
dead father
and snappy mother
mediterranean pink observing thus
strict bony
mouth puckered
as if you had no teeth
taking so naturally
others' suffering
the total afternoon was lateness
and needles and tubes
and dead people round about
and Oneself deformed and naked
with her legs open
with her arms open
expelling all the blood
and all the child
that she is able
that can't get out
because she has an opening
like a fastening
such a conditional companion
pink upright strict
unaffected
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mama has gone
for many years red water has been running
out from under her door
papa curses her
before she went mama was no longer speaking
nor opening her eyes
then she shut the door to her room
and wouldn't come back
behind the door she sometimes calls us
and shouts out a story of a sugar house to eat
and weeps for a long time
and laughs to herself
and we can hear things breaking
and mama speaks now and then hoarsely like a man
like a night far away
and hits things
and we hear her graze herself
on the walls
and a stream of mama comes out under the door
a reddish sad stream not moving
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a big family is a very long passage
and a woman sitting with a child growing up to the roof
a big family is a tongue red and heavy in the head
in the whole right side
not for you
you must listen carefully
a big family is a deadly wounded woman
that doesn't die
A quiet
grudge
listen carefully
don't look over there
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