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Issue 22
Poetry

The Guts and the Skin

  • by Angelina Muñiz-Huberman

The guts and the skin. The innocent and the prudish. Writing from the gut: about the unseen, the unknown, the absolute mystery. Not about the skin, the superficial, the visible.

              Do away with hot topics. Never what’s expected, the facile, what sells. The prostituted.

              Yes, to the individual, the unique, the shockingly rare.

              That terrifying thing: the other, not what is the same.

 

We are in the age of equality. Communism has finally triumphed in its most degrading guise. Not as expected. Not social equality, but rather the equality of stupidity. The equality of repetition, poverty of imagination, the hackneyed, the obliterated thought, the mockery of wisdom. Everyone shouting, pushing, tearing things apart. Dressing in the same uniform style, even if it’s a shabby, tattered, colorless, shapeless, deformed, foul-smelling suit: the waist at ass-level and the ass at waist-level.

              Long live in-difference! Long live dumbed-down language! Let’s ignore all the words. The beautiful, round, resonant words. Let’s stick with the flattest ones, the disposable ones, the know-nothing ones.

              Let’s drag knowledge along the ground. The more science advances, the less man knows. The greater the technology, the greater the ignorance. The greater the fanaticism. The greater the loss of fear. Fear, that driver of questions, has been lost. No one speaks of what should be spoken of: like death, for example. Like love, for example. Death? Love? What is love?

Let’s forget it all. All the accumulated philosophy. The literature we’ve read. The history learned.  Let’s just dispense with them. Take down the banner of knowledge. Let’s trample on poetry. Who wants that ballast?

              Forgetting. That’s what it’s all about. Memory is a hindrance. It should be crushed like a cockroach. Like a centipede. Like a long, straggling line of ants.

              The kingdom of the skin: of what’s on the surface, of the obvious. Forget the guts: what you don’t see doesn’t exist. Therefore, does God not exist?

              No, not right now. Too complicated.

              Where did beauty end up?

              Beauty, what is that?

              Terrible fear of beauty. Of unique beauty.

              Triumph of the unbalanced, the discordant, the awful.

              The inharmonious in its kingdom.

              The harmonious banished.

              Exile of balance. Of the golden rule.

              Ripped clothing, rudimentary word, idiot chorus.

              Noisy devices.

              Kingdom of deafness.

              Loss of limits: I rob, assault, rape, crush, batter, eat my own skin and muscle.

              Above all, rape. The kingdom of rape. I respect nothing to achieve my wretched pleasure. I pursue. I kill. I dismember.

I eat the flesh of children. I drink the blood of women. I vomit the elderly. I behead. Behead. Behead.

              And I remain cool as a cucumber.

              In fact: I am a hero.

              An authentic example. And exemplary, too. I do what everyone does, and everyone does what I do.

              This is equality. I am not even catharsis: I am a skin-deep rerun.

              And the guts? No guts at all. I have no guts.

              I don’t get that intimate.

              I am a repetitious automaton.

              I am what everyone else is.

              Have my own personality? Not a chance!

              All alike, everybody all alike: full of shite.

              The sin of difference.

              And above all, the skin: the all-encompassing and concealing skin.

              Might there be something beneath it?

              Don’t even ask me that question: the skin is the skin and that’s all. Why should I dig deep?

              Paul Valéry said that the deepest thing in man is the skin.

              And yet, I will keep writing from my gut about guts.

 

From Arrhythmias, forthcoming from Literal Publishing in December 2022
Translated by D. P. Snyder
Photo: Lucas Clarysse, Unsplash.
  • Angelina Muñiz-Huberman

Photo: Adriana Pacheco

Angelina Muñiz-Huberman (Hyères, 1936) is the author of 50 books of poetry, stories, essays, and books in translation. She is a professor at the School of Philosophy and Literature at UNAM and a visiting professor at European and American universities. She introduced the neo-historical novel and Sephardic mysticism into Mexican literature; the Spanish exile is a central theme in her work. Awards: Xavier Villarrutia, José Fuentes Mares, Magda Donato, Woman of Valor Award, National University, Protagonista de la Literatura Mexicana, Honorary Member of the Mexican Cultural Seminar, Order of Isabela la Católica. She was the first recipient of the Premio Internacional de Novela Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, 1993. Her books have been translated into various languages and she is widely anthologized. Some of her books are: Morada interior, La lengua florida, El sefardí romántico, El siglo de desencanto, Hacía Malinalco, Rompeolas, Poesía reunida. She is an enormously important Mexican writer who merits more attention by English-language readers.

  • Dorothy Potter Snyder

Photo: Adriana Pacheco

Dorothy Potter Snyder (Philadelphia, 1960) is a writer and translator from Spanish. Her work has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Exile Quarterly, Two Lines Journal, World Literature Today, Review: Literature and Art of the Americas, and World Literature Today among other publications. Her story La puerta secreta (The Secret Door) won recognition at the 2020 International Short Story Competition of the San Miguel Writers Conference. She is a contributor to Public Seminar, Reading in Translation, and Asymptote. Meaty Pleasures, her curation and translation of stories by award-winning Mexican writer Mónica Lavín, was published by Katakana Editores (Miami) in September 2021.

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