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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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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