Editor’s Note: Wild West, the translation into English of El lejano oeste (bid&co, 2013) by Venezuelan poet Alejandro Castro, translated by LALT Managing Editor Arthur Malcolm Dixon, is available now from Alliteration Publishing.

Casalta

I’ve got to survive you
in amongst the dogs at dawn
who sing the songs of hate.
Under bullets over city
day after day Casalta I’ve got to survive you.

But I bear you with me Casalta come what may
with diapers on the balcony and sidewalks
your feigned joy and the sound teeth make in the cold
or could it be in fear of closing the door
and the dog pack the gunshots and merengue
infiltrating through the cracks
as if you did not mind being forevermore deforested
and turning on the government-handout light bulbs
to forget.

I want to leave you here Casalta in the poem
brick you up in childhood rubble.

Me—my brother and I—guessing
the color of the cars in which my father was not coming
making up songs for the blackout
surviving you miraculously
behind the bars.

Song for Bolívar ¹

Now that everything has your name on it, Bolívar,
and that’s no metaphor,
let’s put things in their place.

Miranda did not die of bochinche—you killed him.
And Colombia grew greater gorged on misery.
And the Olympus we raised up
in praise that you might reign atop it
is one endless slum.

And now
you’re into coming back to life or reincarnating
not one soul is unallergic
to your name and that, Bolívar,
is no hyperbole.

Your name is an alibi,
a bill plucked from the mud, worthless,
yet another busted square,
a corner.

Your name is a landlocked country,
the highest peak of the poorest range / on earth.

The only glory in your name, Liberator,
is a street of clacking heels
size twelve.

03-02

for Guillermo Vargas

Across the hallway lives a witch
who has spent her life wondering
which heaven sends the sax down on Sundays
so much baffling jazz to set the scene
for conjuring such blues such Satchmo
gritty in the clacking of the fingers
summoning death.
Heaven is audible from hell.

It finds its way to you as well transparent from
her door the obscenity of ash
from candles lit to who knows which
virgin suicides.

There is no better description of our homeland
than the five infinite feet between your
door and hers: in my country
heaven and hell are neighbors
infecting each other like on the third floor.

III

for Gerardo Rosales

Daddy, when I grow up
I want to be a pansy.
They might like the cold, but look how colorful
they are! Look how they take the shapes
of hearts and faces, and how gracefully
they wither as the earth dries up.

Daddy, when I grow up
I want to be a fairy,
flitting winged
on a diet of dust
until the last believer
loses faith in me.

Daddy, when I grow up
I want to be a queen:
to reign supreme
until a blade takes off my head.

I want to be something pretty and dead
from the last storybook I’ll ever read.

VI

I will feel this poem up.
I will lick it, lie to it, lose
my head over this poem like it was
a man.
I will stare at its feet,
check out this poem’s package as
if it were flesh.
I will ignore the warning signs, won’t know
if it is love or lust or boredom
bringing me down to my knees before this poem.
And I will not look up at its heart:
I like this poem waist-down.
This poem has no heart and mine belongs
for now to the boy at the orange stand
juicing.

Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon

1 This poem’s reference to “bochinche” alludes to a famous statement by Francisco de Miranda, the father of Venezuelan independence, upon his arrest by Simón Bolívar and other revolutionaries who considered him a traitor to their cause.

Photo: Residencias Junín on the west side of Caracas, Venezuela, by Jonathan Mendez, Unsplash.