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Poetry

Three Poems

  • by Juan Arabia

Abracadabra

I am going to pawn my heart
until it becomes a bird and from it fall
new stars for the world.

Because I still travel
—I am a stranger—
and in the cities, the bridges
fall silent and hurt me.

I am going to protect myself from atrocities
and from injustices
until the twilight turns pink
and scars over.

Lake District

I, who denied Christ on the first ship,
finally understood the meaning of the word goodbye.
It’s not a simple send-off:
it is the moment when everything sinks
into the white and transparent seas of numbers,
and the flower it lost, the only proof
of the existence of a paradise.

It is the moment of loss of the immediate heat
of the air that encloses and separates each
thing that exists in the world.

 

Judgment

We move away from the city,
misfortune, misfortune, etc.
In which we make
no more songs.

Our flute remained buried
in the roots of a willow:
destroying the ground,
raising streets and paving stones.

We go far, friends:
where the cows drink,
where the sap flows.

Our verses need
to be judged,
but in more savage lands…

 

Recommended Reading:

“Against the Eviction of the Poet: An Introduction to the Poetry of Juan Arabia” by Rodrigo Arriagada

  • Juan Arabia

Juan Arabia (born June 18, 1983 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a poet, translator, and literary critic. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, where prepared and published a thesis on John Fante and Italian-American working class culture. He is currently the director of the press and journal Buenos Aires Poetry, which has published works by writers including John Ashbery, Dan Fante, Robert Darnton, Mark Ford, and Alan Jenkins, among others. He also collaborates with various other publications, including the journal of the University of La Rioja, Department of Modern Philologies (Spain), the La Torre del Virrey journal of Cultural Studies (Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo de Valencia), the cultural supplement of Diario Perfil (Argentina), and as Argentine correspondent of POESIA (Universidad de Carabobo, Venezuela).

His published books include John Fante: Entre la niebla y el polvo (El fin de la noche: Buenos Aires, 2011); PosData a la Generación Beat (Buenos Aires Poetry: Buenos Aires, 2014); El Enemigo de los Thirties (Buenos Aires Poetry: Buenos Aires, 2015); John Fante: Camino de los sueños diurnos (Buenos Aires Poetry: Buenos Aires, 2016); El Enemigo de los Thirties (Ril Valley: Chile, Los Leones, 2017); Il Nemico dei Thirties (Samuele Editore, 2017); and collana Scilla (Fana, Italia). His translations include Nuevos Versos y Canciones (Arthur Rimbaud, 2014); Un-gin-meando… (Dan Fante, 2015); and Lustra (Ezra Pound, 2016), among others

  • Arthur Malcolm Dixon
headshotarthurdixoncroppededited1

Photo: Sydne Gray

Arthur Malcolm Dixon is co-founder, lead translator, and Managing Editor of Latin American Literature Today. He has translated the novels Immigration: The Contest by Carlos Gámez Pérez and There Are Not So Many Stars by Isaí Moreno (Katakana Editores), as well as the verse collection Intensive Care by Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza (Alliteratïon). He also works as a community interpreter in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

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