Rain:
anoint my skin
wash my eyes.
My night opens
for you.
My wandering.
This endless erring
haunts me.
What voices
from what skies
do you bring to me?
What god
cries
that I don’t hear?
Translated by Luis Rafael Galvez
Amparo Osorio (Bogotá, Colombia, 1951) is a poet, author, essayist, and journalist. She has published the following books: Huracanes de sueños (1983-1984); Gota ebria (1987); Territorio de máscaras (1990); the anthology La casa leída (1996); Migración de la ceniza (1998); Omar Rayo Geometría iluminada (interview, 2001); Antología esencial (Común Presencia Editores, Bogotá, 2001); Memoria absuelta (Universidad Nacional de Colombia Bogotá, Colombia 2004); Memoria absuelta (Lustra editores, Lima, Perú 2008); the anthology Estación profética (2010), Grandes entrevistas de Común Presencia (co-author, Bicentennial Literature Prize, Común Presencia Editores, Bogotá, Colombia, 2010); Oscura música (Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia 2013), the novel Itinerarios de la sangre (Común Presencia Editores, Bogotá, Colombia, 2014) and La caída interior (Común Presencia Editores, Bogotá, Colombia 2017). She is managing editor of the journal Común Presencia and the co-founder, along with Gonzalo Márquez Cristo, of the electronic weekly Con-fabulación, where she is currently the director. She is also the co-director of the Los Conjurados International Literature collection, which has published 123 titles across the genres of poetry, essay, short story, novel, crónica, and testimonio.
Like rearranging the furniture of one’s home,
searching for some peace,
that’s how I prepare to burn the bridges
that uphold everything I knew as manly.
For a time, I believed that I had a language. I was sure: it was as much as part of me as my skin. This certainty began at age four,…
The space your body takes up in the world is equal to the space of the body into which someone has retreated; / and, if so, no one has any…
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