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Issue 35
Poetry

The Netanyahu Slaughterhouse

  • by Elvira Hernández
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  • September, 2025

Customer service closed
no plea will be heard.  

Doors bolted shut
on any talk of anguish. 

Ears blocked by walls
against another wailing
against another diaspora. 

The front windows
exhibit
professional cadaverous activities. 

Butchered bodies
hang on hooks.
This is a slaughterhouse.

A sea of blood
leaks from under the door,
soaking our feet
our silence. 

 

II

(Inventory)

So much meat gets piled up
                           sliced               butchered
                                          vacuum sealed in bulk

unregulated
insatiable carving
blind          shattering          rabid blasts
ay amnesia
an eye for a thousand eyes
Kosher method
grim delight 

 

III

 

What kind of bird ravaged
                       God’s triangular eye
                                    —his camara—
                        to keep him from seeing the slaughterhouse? 

Translated by Thomas Rothe
The translator would like to thank Rebekah Smith for her insightful comments on an earlier version of this translation.
Photo: Tomer Texler, Unsplash.
  • Elvira Hernández

Photo: Luis G. Collao

Elvira Hernández (b. Lebu, Chile, in 1951) is one of the most important yet low-profile voices of contemporary Chilean poetry. Her work, which includes visual poetry and essay, is often associated with the neo-avant-garde generation of Chilean writers, which emerged in the 1980s through the artistic interventions and publications of Raúl Zurita, Diamela Eltit, and Juan Luis Martínez, among others. She has published the following books of poetry: ¡Arre! Halley ¡Arre! (1986), Meditaciones físicas por un hombre que se fue (1987), Carta de viaje (1989), La bandera de Chile (1991), El orden de los días (1991), Santiago Waria (1992), Álbum de Valparaíso (2002), Cultivo de hojas (2007), Cuaderno de deportes (2010), un fantasma recorre el mundo (2012), Actas urbe (2016), Pájaros desde mi ventana (2018), and Pena corporal (2018). In 2018, she was awarded the Jorge Teillier National Poetry Prize and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize. In 2024, she was awarded the Chilean National Prize for Literature. An anthology of her selected poetry, Bodies Found in Various Places, translated by Daniel Borzutzky and Alec Schumacher, was published in August of 2025 by Cardboard House Press.

  • Thomas Rothe

Photo: Francisca Sáenz

Thomas Rothe (b. Oakland, California, in 1985) is a translator and scholar of Caribbean and Latin American literatures. His research focuses on the history of translation, print and popular culture, and critical discourses. As a translator, he has brought into English the poetry of Jaime Huenún, Rodrigo Lira, Emma Villazón, and Julieta Marchant, among others. He has also co-translated into Spanish Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously and Claire of the Sea Light. He is currently Associate Professor of Literature at the Universidad de Playa Ancha, in Valparaíso, Chile, and a Fondecyt postdoctoral fellow.

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