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Indigenous Literature

From Guerra Florida

  • by Daniela Catrileo

*
Under the light
our skin
is lit up gold
like the eye of a jaguar
who reveals the secret
of the rainbow in his pupil
and succumbs to the brightness
of signs

In this part of the world
it is always a comet

 

*
Lightning bolts
and their storm
flashes in the darkness

The beautiful dead night
burns

and your skin       so smoky
in this crackle of burning trees

 

*
The stars pointed to the killing
like guardians of our secret
but it was late and it was mist
burns and boats forecast to surface

At the next blink of waves
wakes     fallen embers
lit up the sky like lightning
that pauses before sending branches
into the perpetual darkness of its vault

From the sky fell splinters
and ashes
and our naked bodies
were dressed in the guts of the ocean
radiating our eyelids
up to the question

We knew ourselves
scattered islands under gods
impossible to name

No future    And now what?
Now every eye does its own business

 

*
We rehearse a scene of uproar
to enrage the mountain
with masks that cover
garbs       skins of fierce wild cats
and our hearts at the center

A jungle geography
where we train arrows and choreographies
for our sentinels

After that
the nights were nothing more
than the invention of the origin
a bundle of deaths under the sky
and perhaps
a little mezcal añejo
born from the first tree

Before the horror we were alive
We all wanted to be the sun

 

*
Crossdressed
at the point of peyote
some Women of the East
shot up muday
in the delirium of defeat

P u m a g i r l s
D e e r g i r l s

dancing what’s left of life

On this mass of earth
what else to do?
No one can accept the end

Tomorrow we will return to the offerings
And I will say:
this is my body
this is my blood
this is my promise to you

I will twist enemy necks
stomp on skulls
honor the unspeakable fiction
we will never write

Before I see their heads piled on the field
I will burst through yanaconas
That will be my last celebration

 

*
Kneeling before you
Mother Volcano
I light the fire
and the mountain is lit

I smear my forehead
with the lime of your ash
I braid my hair
with sprigs of mint
and repeat:

This I am
a final shot

Poems from Guerra Florida [Flower war], Del Aire Editores, 2018

Curated and selected by Paula Miranda and Andrea Vargas

Translated by Arthur Dixon

Mapuche poet Daniela Catrileo. Photo: Álvaro de la Fuente, Proyecto Diálogo.
  • Daniela Catrileo

Photo: Álvaro de la Fuente. Proyecto Diálogo

Daniela Catrileo is a Mapuche poet. She was born in 1987 in the commune of San Bernardo, Santiago de Chile. She earned a degree in education and is now a professor of philosophy, an artist, an activist, and a member of the Colectivo Mapuche Feminista Rangiñtulewfü. She was awarded a grant by the Pablo Neruda Foundation (2011) and another for creative writing (2012 and 2016) from the  Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes. Her poetry has appeared in the collections Cada Vigilia (2007)  and El territorio en viaje (2017). She has published the books Río herido (2013), Invertebrada (2017), and Guerra Florida (2018).  She also participated in the collective book Niñas con palillos (2014), winner of the Premio Mustakis. In 2018, she performed the action “Mari pura warangka küla pataka mari meli: 18.314,” a series of interventions in Santiago de Chile, to denounce the injustices carried out against the Mapuche people based on the Ley Antiterrorista 18.314 of 1984.

  • 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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