Is counting bodies the same
as counting rocks at night?
The focused gesture of counting
—piece by piece—
is it the same?
Is it the same
lantern light
that illuminates the body and the rock?
And if they’re thrown in the water,
do they sink the same?
And if one of the bodies does not appear,
is it the same absence that a rock leaves
when it’s not in its place?
Translated by Juan Afanador
Juan Afanador (Bogotá, Colombia, 1992) studied Anthropology with an emphasis on Creative Writing at the Universidad de los Andes. Some of his poems have been published in REC (the magazine of the students of Arts and Humanities of the Universidad de los Andes), Cabeza de gato, La raíz invertida, and Literariedad, as well as in Conexos magazine. He is founder, director, and member of the editorial board of the virtual poetry magazine Otro páramo.
Her face, engraved with wrinkles, couldn’t hide the sadness that she carried in her heart, a pain so immense that with every breath she took she would have preferred to…
The Most Fragile Objects, Chimal’s first novel published in translation, tells three stories (maybe two, or just one) of people living secret lives in early 21st-century Mexico. They seem to…
Etymologically, the word Mapuche blends the Mapuzungun word “mapu,” meaning “land,” with “che,” meaning “people.” In other words, the Mapuche self-identify as “the people of the land.” Moreover, the preposition…
