Skip to content
LALT-Iso-Black
  • menu
  • English
  • Español
Issue 17
Uncategorized

Three Poems from Cosmonauta

  • by Enza García Arreaza
Print Friendly, PDF & Email
  • February, 2021

if you drew a map of my body
you would find traces of the blast
where dinosaurs pass away
where those who did not love me agonize
look at the long line of people
who would not give their lives for you
unlike your mother
who really had no choice but to open wide
and spit you out
onto the soil and its fossils
as women did in 1987 when
nobody aired their dirty laundry
in the form of hashtags
from now on I’ll be teleological
I will claim that all these poems
are about her
the very insufferable one
who does not even know how to speak properly
she would surely say this poem is insidious
just take a seat child and get yourself a piece of cake

 

*

A tenebrous prediction hinders me
demon with a long tongue
screams louder than a crowd of parakeets
sailing the afternoon
you have to pay attention to the first ruins
you have to negotiate the stars
because one is one’s tribe and one’s dead dog
we have to clean ourselves
that is the difference between us and angels

 

*

I imagine a coffin with loose bones, a riot of gunfire and liquor during the funerals of a criminal. Literature is the splendorous dead making noise in your shameful crack, shaking chains from places of guilt or resentment. And of happiness, too. Doesn’t this happen to you, where you wake up in the middle of the night and don’t understand how it’s possible that we always have a voice inside our head? Possessing something alive, of dialogue or gagged, memorious and prophetic, is an evolutionary concession that still amazes me. It is the distance between the birth of a star and a tale from beyond the grave.

 

From the book Cosmonauta. Caracas: Fundación La Poeteca, 2020.
Translated by Enza García Arreaza and James Cummings

Self-portrait of Venezuelan writer Enza García Arreaza.
  • Enza García Arreaza

Enza García Arreaza (Venezuela) is a short fiction writer and poet, author of Cállate poco a poco (2008), El bosque de los abedules (2010), Plegarias para un zorro (2012), and El animal intacto (2015). In 2017 she was a resident of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and at the City of Asylum—Pittsburgh. During 2018 and 2020 she was a Fellow at the International Writers Project for endangered writers at Brown University.

  • James Cummings

James Cummings is a freelance translator, with a BA in Asian Languages and Literature from the University of Iowa. He translates from Japanese and Spanish.

PrevPreviousThree Poems by Rodrigo Arriagada-Zubieta
NextThe Mestizaje of Genres: An Interview with Ernesto CarriónNext
RELATED POSTS

The Character's Skin

By Alonso Cueto

Fiction is a consequence of a writer’s curiosity about life. I don’t think a writer’s interest is life in general. What matters to a writer is the concrete gallery of…

Daughters of Latin America: A New, Borderless Country of Us

By Sandra Guzmán

Three Poems

By Cristian Cruz

Tonight is a nice night to dance to rock.
We brought my father, dead, from Santiago,
the family wanted to see itself together at last:
our mother only ever took orders from the…

Footer Logo

University of Oklahoma
780 Van Vleet Oval
Kaufman Hall, Room 105
Norman, OK 73019-4037

  • Accessibility
  • Sustainability
  • HIPAA
  • OU Job Search
  • Policies
  • Legal Notices
  • Copyright
  • Resources & Offices
Updated 06/27/2024 12:00:00
Facebook-f X-twitter Instagram Envelope
Latin American Literature Today Logo big width
MAGAZINE

Current Issue

Book Reviews

Back Issues

Author Index

Translator Index

PUBLISH IN LALT

Publication Guidelines

Guidelines for Translators

LALT AND WLT

Get Involved

Student Opportunities

GET TO KNOW US

About LALT

LALT Team

Mission

Editorial Board

LALT BLOG
OUR DONORS
Subscribe
  • email
LALT Logo SVG white letters mustard background

Subscriptions

Subscribe to our mailing list.