Subway Map
This is the line you must take to find him
you must take this one to come back to me
no confusing the lines please
white is white and red is red
by going past the old squares you come to me
by stepping inside museums and cafés you’ll run into him
Take everything he gives you except poison
never tell him what you’ve felt
the word exile is forbidden
don’t be a lunatic don’t undress
don’t let him photograph you for nostalgia’s sake
don’t discuss Havana don’t heal him
don’t sing anything which might recall that sound
don’t give your book away don’t show him his verse
don’t listen to him speak forget him
don’t carry his name in your diary
just get the map and come down to me
finally say goodbye to his reprisals
Once and for all both of you end this silence.
Inuit Promise
For you I will leave the snow and ski on the sand
I will not write graffiti on the ice
I’ll adopt a western accent and summer clothes
my teeth will not tenderize any skin but yours
my scent dissolves in your clean lavender
just like the sturgeon loses caviar I’ll lose my name
I’ll forget the ritual of the igloo woman and the prey
I’ll look upon thawing as water from my sex
at the end of the night I won’t give away to strangers what belongs to you
but will stay in your bed provoking fire
and wipe away bait and fish from my mouth
set the sled dogs free
try to forget being exiled from ice
we’ll winter together while winter still aches
on the edge of the iceberg traveling on the white island
my mother’s frozen tear
and your father’s imploring murmur survive
perhaps amnesia is the best option
even if all appears to belong in another world
together we’ll hunt
Inuit promise.
Memory and Dust
For mommy: Albis Torres
Your time is now a butterfly,
a small white vessel, slender, nervous
S.R.
I humanize the movement of a lost butterfly
fluttering in the epistolary sob of what begins
erasing the ink from the crazed notebook
telling lies about the never-ending wind
and sketching calm while waiting for the breeze
A summer halo arrived drowning pride
and in the suffering that agony recalls
she flies violet and strange
As though her state of pregnant beauty were invisible
she falls naked at my feet without blushing
While I recover dust from her books
she leaves me behind and escapes
between her wings
memory
Orgy of the Wind
You contain the wind
You stir all the strange meanings of words
and paintings
I’m not wired to understand
I feel and that hurts
Moored boats emerge under my thighs
I watch how a kleptomaniac touches humid gold
he numbs me wearing cold silk gloves
a game of strange hands and thighs
While he steals from us I taste you
You contain light and red wine
I sweat in a winter of fire
I switch to another man another and another who plays with my skirts
It’s the wind the wind transparency and scent
white letters dispersed in desire’s amorality.
The Actress
I’m telling lies
It’s all in my head and I make it up
I live in the altarpiece of a country posing for the planet
A country posing and complaining
A country pondering in Latin and speaking in noises jokes desire
You threw the javelin flying above my head
I travel with it in countries left out of the official story
You’ll never be able to recognize the dark eyes you’re already forgetting
Too much obsession over the Water Polo player
I try to forget that Hockney’s swimming pool is real
I’m telling lies
I perform while writing
I look at photographers passing through
I smile and already belong to history
the black and white photo of what we have been
Here you have me
Telling lies while I wait for you.
Translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson and Esperanza Hope Snyder
Poems from Ropa interior, © Wendy Guerra
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Nancy Naomi Carlson has received two literature translation fellowships from the NEA, and her translations have been finalists for the BTBA and the CLMP Firecracker Awards. She is a poet, translator, essayist, and translations editor for On the Seawall, and has authored twelve titles (eight translated). An Infusion of Violets (Seagull, 2019) was named “New & Noteworthy” by the New York Times, and her translation of Mauritian writer Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull, 2021) was recently published.
Esperanza Hope Snyder is a native of Bogotá, Colombia. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry Northwest, Blackbird and other journals. Former poet laureate of Shepherdstown, West Virginia and Poet in Residence at Shepherd University, she is assistant director for Bread Loaf in Sicily and co-coordinator of the Lorca Prize. Her poetry book, Esperanza and Hope (Sheep Meadow Press), was published in 2018.
