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Vocablos y puentes

Cruzando la frontera #2

1/17/2018

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Cruzando la frontera #2
La segunda vez que crucé la frontera ilegalmente fue ese mismo día, acompañado por mis padres y por lo que me imagino es la luz tenue del atardecer en la frontera.
 
Sé que hemos cruzado el puente, que estamos del otro lado (y aunque aún no existían las preguntas, me pregunto ¿Del otro lado de qué? Y si hay “el otro lado”, tiene que haber “este lado”, ¿no? ¿Y que del medio de los dos lados? ¿Qué hay allí?). 
 
Me causa un revuelo el oír voces ajenas fuera de mí (aunque el concepto del mí y del otro aún no eran parte de mi ser: el mí y el otro eran lo mismo). Las voces dicen cosas que no entiendo, el ritmo diferente, las raíces otras. Y pienso (dentro de mi cuna liquida) que no es tanto que no entiendo lo que dicen, aunque eso es cierto, pero es más cierto que nunca antes he oído esa forma ajena de hablar. Oigo a mi padre decir, “Is that right?” en lo que después reconocería como su acento tejano/mexicano. Y oirlo hablar otro idioma me conmociona. En un momento Munchiano, me agarro con mis manitas los lados de mi cabeza. Abro los ojos a tal grado que pienso que se van a desorbitar y hago la más grande “O” posible con mi boquita. Trago demasiado de mi liquido y siento que casi me ahogo.
 
El shock lingüístico y sicológico y existencial es demasiado. Lloro, mis lágrimas derramándose y disolviéndose en el líquido. Sigo las lágrimas con mis ojitos, ojitos que aun no ven, pero bien pueden distinguir dentro de ese líquido. Veo las lágrimas flotar, los cristales dentro de las lágrimas poco a poco disolviéndose dentro del líquido, dejando en mi boca el sabor inconfundible de sal y la clara sensación de dolor. Siento entonces las manos de mamá sobar su estómago y decir ya ya ya ya y me para el llanto. Jadea mi respiración por un momento pero pasa el susto. Me acurruco en mi posición de siempre, me chupo el dedo y me duermo.
 
Mientras duermo tengo mi primer pesadilla, en la cual no veo casi nada. Siento que floto en el espacio, un espacio de tenues luces y tenues sombras. Oigo las voces de las personas que me van a traer al mundo. Bien. Reconozco. Sonrío. Me chupo el dedo.
 
Pero entonces un brusco cambio (y la parte de la pesadilla).
 
Las voces cambian y hablan en esa lengua rara y ajena que nunca antes había oído
pero que oí ese mismo día cuando crucé por primera y segunda vez la frontera. Me pregunto a mí mismo (un mí mismo que, al igual, aún no existía): ¿Qué pasa? ¿Quiénes son estas personas? ¿Qué hablan? ¿Qué dicen? 
Puedo decir que fue mi primera experiencia bilingüe.
Y es cuando se me suelta otra vez el llanto.
 
Ese día supe que el llanto es del dolor de cruzar de un mundo real a otro mundo real, de un mundo metafísico a otro mundo metafísico, de un mundo linguistico a otro mundo linguistico.
 
Y entiendo que el puente es la manera de cruzar.

© Jaime Herrera


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La fe de la frontera

1/9/2018

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La fe de la frontera. 
 
Cruzando la frontera #1
 
Aun no nacía la primera vez que crucé la frontera ilegalmente. 
 
Vamos por el puente libre rumbo a El Paso mi papá y mi mamá (conmigo en utero). Aunque siento la misma vaga y familiar sensación de estar flotando en el líquido alrededor de mí, al mismo tiempo siento el parar y seguir del carro, primero inclinándose levemente hacia arriba, después de tiempo nivelándose, y al fin inclinándose levemente hacia abajo. El movimiento primero me causa empinarme en mi líquido – cabizbajo - después me enderezo y me vierto hacia abajo. Me doy vueltas, causándome desorientación y mareo, un vómito claro saliendo de mí que pronto se pierde en el liquido alrededor de mí.
 
Fuera de mí, fuera del cuerpo de mi madre, fuera del carro, puedo oir el ronroneo de los carros, los ocasionales pitidos, las voces de mis papás (las había oído anteriormente, las conocía ya, aun cuando todas las voces me sonaban amortiguadas dentro del liquido). Otras voces gritan (sabía que eran otras, pero me eran familiar su sonido y su ritmo). Puedo oler el humo de los escapes de los carros y lo veo entrar por la ventana abierta del carro, por la boca de mi madre y sigo el humo hasta tragarlo y sentirlo en mis pulmones. Me mareo y toso levemente y trago un poco de mi líquido, el cúal es como agua bendita, pienso, porque me recupero instantaneamente. 
 
Confortado por el movimiento y los ruidos a mi alrededor, me chupo el dedo gordo del pie izquierdo. Veo a mi alrededor y no veo nada además de lo que había visto igual los últimos meses: La lagañosa claridad del día. Me acurruco en mi eterna posición de feto y duermo mientras terminamos de cruzar el puente. 
 
Ya al fin de la linea, el carro para por un momento y despierto. Oigo murmurar “American”, primero mi mamá y después mi papá. “American.” Como si por conjuro mágico, la palabra nos libera de la linea. Agarramos velocidad. Y puedo sentir que nos hemos internado en otro mundo.
 
© Jaime Herrera
​

***
Jaime H. Herrera is currently a Professor of English at Mesa Community College. Jaime is a product of the Juárez/El Paso border, a place he holds dear and which embodies who he is, as much Mexican as American, as much Mexicano (and mexinaco) as he is estadounidense (and gringo). He is bicultural and bilingual (and speaks a good Spanglish too). He knows that the border is a space that cannot be fenced. La frontera es un espacio que no se puede cercar. He loves translation, the back and forth between the two languages. Also. he writes his own poetry in both English and Spanish and has written a novel (as of yet unpublished), tentatively titled This is not Juárez. When he dies, he wants his ashes spread right in the middle of the bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, his ashes blowing in both directions.
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Because the Dead / Tri-Angels

11/29/2017

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Because the Dead
 
I was late for the funeral. The cathedral tilted, and once I started walking under its arch, it grew and became like a city
 
unto itself. People advanced through the large wooden doors, dressed in dark suits and skirts, traveling in pairs, like animals
 
disembarking from Noah’s ark. I also wore grey (with black pumps), and I knew it wouldn’t matter that I was late
 
for the funeral. Although I had never been here before, I knew I’d blown across the sea. (Maybe that’s why it took so long to get there. Maybe
 
that’s why I was late.) I knew I had to arrive, but it didn’t matter that I was late. Only that I appear.
I had the vantage point of an angel’s--peering
 
down from the gargoyles. It didn’t matter that I was late for the funeral because it was mine. All of us attending,
 
at some point, kneeling in the pews, genuflecting in the aisle, lying still in the casket. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, it was like a litany
 
of the saints: Harvey, Irma, Jose, Lidia, and then Maria slaughtered Juan. No one survived. It didn’t matter that I was late for the funeral because the dead are still filing through.
 
 
 
*** 
 
 
Tri-Angles
 
The guy with the red
beard doesn’t believe
in angels. He goes out
of his way to announce this,
 
inserts it into the writers’ group
as casually as kneeling down
to tie a shoe. But he knows I am
the one who knows angels, I read
 
my poems about them the night
before the day of his proclamation.
He must be thinking of them literally
(the angels not the writers). He must

think that I think of them flying
in white robes and halos. He doesn’t think
about the angels formed from ashes and acid,
rancid trash and smack. The guy with the red
 
beard writes about drug culture and doesn’t
believe in angels as if no user ever hallucinated
before. The guy with the red beard has a voice 
that sounds like a tricycle wheels careening 

across cracks in the cement—as when a child
circles his three wheels over and over the same
fractures in the same O, like he’s riding around a cracked
circus ring, and the red beard’s cement voice thuds over
 
syllables like VERy and VEdas. This red-bearded
guy doesn’t believe in angels, but he’s interested
in depicting the ‘dark side of life’– you know, drug
culture, and such, because no angel ever drifts 

around low-down addiction – angels only
dance on clouds swathed in glorious beams of light. 
 
 © Kimberly Williams


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The Man Who Almost Wrote a Poem

11/1/2017

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The Man Who Almost Wrote a Poem
 
In his youth, he worked first on the title.
He wrote it out longhand on yellow tablet paper: The Poem.
He looked at it, crossed it out.
He tried “13” as a title.
But he wasn’t sure if 13 was technically
a number?
a word?
He spent months on the title:
Trapped at Night in The Mercado. The Hungry Dog Chases Me and I Am Paralyzed.
No seas pendejo. Losing My Teeth to Lisa. Ode to 43. La casa anaranjada. El hijo de su reputa madre.
 
In his dreams, he saw titles floating in front of him,
But they disappeared once he woke, evanescent slipping away, much like the years.
He wrote down what he remembered
and stuffed the title pages away in his desk drawer.
For later, he thought.
 
The titles thus drawered,
He turned to the poem.
One week he wrote twenty-nine, page-long stanzas of his poem,
Each stanza 175 words.
He did not sleep. He missed work.
He put it all away in his desk drawer, for later revision.
 
In his twenties and into his thirties, he had writer’s block for ten years.
He would sit at his desk for hours on end, staring at the blank page, the pen, his hand.
He tore the cuticles from his fingers until his fingers bled.
He would dab the blood from his fingers with Kleeenex and save the Kleenex in that same drawer.
He couldn’t write,
but he thought that suffering was good.
The Kleenex reminded him and would help him write poetry, perhaps later,
when the block lifted.
He suffered much, he thought. Good, he thought.
Maybe next decade, he thought.
 
Sometimes he wrote in English.
Sometimes in Spanish.
He would mix the two languages
Just like they were mixed in his head, in his limbs, in his mouth and eyes and tongue and brain and in the tattoos he thought he would get but never did.
 
 
At work, over the course of thirty years,
as he sat next to Bob and Vanessa and then others from accounting,
he looked over his shoulder and wrote a few lines every day.
Bob and Vanessa looked at him, then each other, and rolled their eyes.
He could see them roll their eyes, and he sometimes wondered if they had stronger eye muscles than he did. His eyesight was dimming.
When it was time to go home, he put the lines in his briefcase and scurried stealthily past the security guard, hoping no one would look in his briefcase. No one ever did.
Once home, he emptied his briefcase into his desk drawer.
Before bed, he went to the bathroom mirror, looked at his eyes, and did some eye rolls to strengthen his eye muscles. He practiced his eye rolls with his wife, but she did not understand.
He slept on the living room couch.
 
 
One other night, back in his bedroom, he angered his wife when, in the middle of a heated argument, he picked up a pen and a used Kleenex.
I have an idea for a poem called The Argument he told her.
He wrote what he could on the Kleenex
Before she tore the Kleenex from his hand and threw it at him, the Kleenex fluttering like a bird he had seen flysmack into their bedroom window one sunny day, and, much like the bird, it fell and splayed silently at his feet.
Eres un pendejo she spat at him as he bent over to pick up the dead Kleenex.
He went to his desk, and wrote down Eres un pendejo and Dead Bird.
He could hear his wife crying in the bedroom.
He stuffed the shredded Kleenex into the drawer.
He went to comfort him, but she said ¡No me toques! and closed their bedroom door.
He could not help but think “Don’t Touch Me!” could be the title of a poem.
 
He often woke up at night and wrote a word or a line or a reminder on scraps of paper,
and they filled his nightstand drawer.
One day his wife threw the scraps of paper in the trash.
“No!” he screamed to her as he looked at her in horror. He rolled his eyes.
She left him then.
She left him a goodbye note on a Kleenex, “Hijo de tu reputa madre, you are a big and sorry pendejo.”
“Ah, poetic justice,” he thought. He kept the note.
 
Over the course of time he forgot and lost more of the poem than he ever wrote down.
He would have dreams that were poems, but as soon as he woke
he would forget.
He had only the vague feeling of having dreamed the faces and bodies and outstretched arms and eyes and mouths of loved ones.
Though the feeling was vague and became vaguer and then lost completely, he thought it was a good feeling.
He could not write words to capture what was gone, so
he drew pictures to try to capture the dream.
He drew red and yellow waves, a half-eaten ear, uneven teeth, a house that leaned almost to the ground, a pinstriped yellow and black jaguar with purple horns,
And a tree with leaves from which hung old contortioned blue station wagons
that made the branches of the tree bend down to the ground.
 
There was always some interruption,
the phone ringing, someone at the door,
girlfriends, love, breakups,
wives, daughters, work, travel
aging parents, friends who entered his life,
many of whom left, though some stayed.
He would show those who stayed his unfinished poem.
They said they liked it. In his mind he saw them rolling their eyes.
Dissatisfied, he would stuff the poems in his drawer.
 
 
One year, he wrote
seventeen syllables--
first five, then seven, then five again--
all of it centered on the image of a duck that had lost a wing but could still fly,
though in small and tight circles that overlapped,
just enough so that the duck covered some small distances but always veered to the left.
It would alight, whether in water or on dry land, and it would walk around in circles, dizzy, and it would vomit worms and small partially digested fish and grass.
Dizzy Duck he called the poem.
He was happy with the poem and thought the title was genius.
Someone praised him, said what a wonderful haiku.
Pinche madre he said in anger.
He did not want a haiku and balled it up and threw it into the drawer.
 
And so it went for the span of his life,
which was long and good in some ways, but relatively unremarkable.
There were the births and deaths, marriages and divorces,
and moments when life seemed crystalline,
children going to school, growing up, moving out.
Where did they go?
There were moments when he didn’t know how people continued to live
in the midst of such pain and misery and suffering and horror--
The husband who came home to find his wife, sitting in a chair in the hallway entryway, half her head gone to the shotgun blast, their two boys shot in their beds, blood-soaked pilllows.
But these moments passed.
He focused on his poetry.
 
 
One night, late in his life, he went to his desk.
He pulled hard on the drawer and looked at it jammed full of papers, bits and pieces of Kleenex (some with dried blood), loose typed sheets, notebooks and journals, some full of writing, many blank,
some with numbers, drawings that seemed as if drawn and colored by a child of two--of trees and allegorical animals and cars that flew among oddly shaped clouds, one cloud looking like the prosthetic leg of Santa Anna, or so he thought.
There were balled up bits of scraps of paper and napkins, some receipts.
Memory cards. Floppy disks. Thumb drives. Passwords.
He looked at the contents of the desk drawer with confusion and concentration, the same way he looked when he walked into a room and forgot why he had walked into the room or when he opened the refrigerator and stared inside and then closed the door, having gotten nothing.
But this time, when he walked away, he did not suddenly remember that he was looking for his glasses, or orange juice.
He sighed and struggled and closed the drawer shut
and shuffled to his bedroom.
 
That night he could not sleep.
As he lay in bed,
he thought of his poem.
He was close to something he thought.
He felt a faint smile cross his face, his eyes widened and glistened as he finally came upon the way to write the poem.
He turned to tell his wife,
but she was not there. She had been gone a long time.
He wrote himself a note.
He would have written Eureka but felt that there must be a better word.  
Instead he drew a picture of a balloon, a number, some other figure
and fell asleep and slept the sleep of a younger man.
He dreamed of old girlfriends, of being young,
of the first car he ever had, driving it fast in row after row of a junked cars.
He dreamed of the first girl he loved. The girl he always loved.
He dreamed of living in another country, the sound of the ocean,
the smell of mango, the taste of a peso as he pressed his tongue to it,
a dog he had, its bark almost waking him.
In his dream, his daughters appeared to him and called him
“papi,” and they spoke Spanish to him.
He dreamed of old friends and in that half-dream state he knew that some of those friends had long been dead. He moaned in his sleep though no one heard him.
He dreamed his parents, long ago dead also.
In his dream they were young.
They called to him,
“mi hijo.”
 
 
The next morning,
One of his daughters came to the house to wake him,
“Papi,” she said as she walked into the bedroom. He did not respond.
She cried as she sat next to his body on the bed and held his cold hand.
She looked over and saw the scrap piece of paper on the nightstand,
the number 13 scrawled on it. A yellow balloon.
A happy face.
 
© Jaime Herrera

Picture
​Jaime H. Herrera is currently a Professor of English at Mesa Community College. Jaime is a product of the Juárez/El Paso border, a place he holds dear and which embodies who he is, as much Mexican as American, as much Mexicano (and mexinaco) as he is estadounidense (and gringo). He is bicultural and bilingual (and speaks a good Spanglish too). He knows that the border is a space that cannot be fenced. La frontera es un espacio que no se puede cercar. He loves translation, the back and forth between the two languages. Also. he writes his own poetry in both English and Spanish and has written a novel (as of yet unpublished), tentatively titled This is not Juárez. When he dies, he wants his ashes spread right in the middle of the bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, his ashes blowing in both directions.
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Zhila Nooshin Far

10/11/2017

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No incident
occurs impetuously.
Every occurrence,
often for days,
or perhaps for years,
has reared the embryo of silence
within its matrix. 
Life, perhaps,
is the sum total 
of our misapprehensions.
But I am certain,
that one must fear two things:
The chirping of termites,
and,
the silence of a woman. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In the frenzied streets,
I lost,
the child within, 
 
the child who had believed 
the promises of flight 
with falcon wings. 
 
Do not leave me
in this relentlessly darksome mystery!
Come and seek me
 
in the season of kisses,
once again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
In the back of the gloomy window
a pair of shoes
are waiting to be worn.
Come on.
---------------------------------------------------
 
I want to open the window 
to welcome Spring!
But if Spring 
does not pay me a visit,
I will seek refuge 
before the mirror. 
The mirror
makes me boundless.
-----------------------------------------------------
 
I am searching
in vain.
I must tell
the blisters on my feet
that no map in the world
provides directions
to a lost heart.
-----------------------------------------------------
Shun the one
who knows you
very well.
He knows
precisely
which corner of your heart
to target.
-----------------------------------------------------
I am that woman
whom you lost
on a careless night!
 
On a night when
desire
returned home in despair,
you vanished
in darksome lies.
And rain,
washed away
all excuses.
 
Today,
even the Sun
longs for a miracle
to shine
through the thick clouds.
The ice age
Is here.
---------------------------------------------------------
Do not overlook
that which wafts
over your face!
It is nothing
but a gentle kiss
from me.
--------------------------------------------
Release the string
of the kite of your longing.
It will soar
and land upon my home,
I'm certain,
for it knows
the story of my yearning.


***I was born in an educated family in Iran-Mashhad (one of the cities of Iran) in 1967. My mother always encouraged me to write daily memories, and I did it for long time. When I was 9 years old, I wrote my first poem. Then, I began learning classical literature from the famous teachers besides my routine school studying. The most influential one was Dr. Mohammad Hadi Kamyabi who taught me comparative literature. I took a BA from Ferdowsi University in Mashhad, and my MA from Tehran University. After graduating, I returned to Mashhad and began working in Tejarat Bank. I worked for seventeen years there. For more than the last decade, I was the only female branch Bank manager. The government no longer felt good toward such position, and I also was no longer allowed to write. 

My first published work is the collection of poems called A Simple Day (2004). And my first novel is The Second Wife (2006). Both books both were censored. Because of my divorce and intensive political and social pressures, I had to immigrate to the USA with my son, Soroush, in 2011. My two novels The Second Wife (2015) and The Lost Identity (2016) have been published in Farsi without censor here in the USA . I have also written some short stories and poems for Toosheh Magazine(2014 to now). I have many lectures, interviews and articles as an Iranian activist, human rights activist, and author, as well as working for the Hamzaban Cultural Institute. Right now I’m living with my son in Phoenix, Arizona

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Re-Learning the Alphabet: DNA y DACA

9/20/2017

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By Kimberly K. Williams
                              
Re-Learning the Alphabet: DNA y DACA
I toss our DNA
into the blue metal box
like I am tossing in a bill.
It doesn’t seem right, adding
a plastic bag containing two vials of cheek
cells to birthday cards and utility
payments just to see where I’m ‘from.’
This is my DNA—my very core, I want to
say, handle with care. But the United

States Postal Service, like most things
run by the U.S. government, is here
to remind you that there’s nothing
special about you. We are too
many humans past caring. You don’t
count. And someone with DNA
like mine (so fair!) and a family story (like
mine) three generations distant from
Ellis Island will be glad to send you ‘home.’
Even if you were raised here. Even if
you went to elementary school at the age of six
and suddenly discovered English in your mouth.

Even if you used these unexpected sounds
to construct bridges between your parents
and your grandparents and the country
you were raised in. Even once you became used
to these sounds and they became part of you, you
ascertained along the way that your DNA holds
no value, that all along you’d been using the wrong
words, that they were as effective as $800 and hand-printed
answers on a long form. You count as much as one more

bill in the mailbox, even though you’ve already paid.
To prove the fatness that three slim generations have
gained, we’re going to reveal that we’ve had our fingers
crossed behind our backs for decades. We’re going
to stamp return to sender across your shoulders,
face you south and, whether or not your DNA even
formed there, and whether or not there’s a stupid wall
blocking your exit, you’ll have to move along.
We’re so pleased to send you ‘home’--

© Kimberly Williams
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A Tapestry

5/3/2017

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Poems by Benjamín Valdivia.                                                                    Translated by Kimberly​ Williams


A Tapestry

In the west forms a web of unprecedented purple:
threads of night and the day’s end are warmed in the warp
of sun or sound:

Crackle of the spectacle, scream of the dying star
or today’s kiss. It is the radiant weave of violets
in their rough grays and their definitive reds and amethysts. 

There you take the voice from which you weave a joyful season:
an afternoon sifted in space as the threads of night burn
into the plots of a tapestry.
 

Jasmine’s Gift
 
Astounding jasmine,
its scent,
its fresh gift;
 
I don’t have a clear memory
of having jasmines that day
or if alone
 
it was your appearance
when the motion of your hair
became a movement of aromas
 
sailing by
the constellations
of the house.
 
Everything blazed
jasmine
before your path:
 
light white vegetable stars
illuminating the keys  
of this same place.
 
 
Figure in the Shade
 
On my side, city of the heart
drawing towards shore,
throwing sands in the night:
 
sea of those stripped of their load,
water of the weightless
gripping the pupils of the twilight.  
 
It’s a sea with defined lines: immovable
waves striping the skin whose
movements beat and regret the night.
 
In these sands are two figures
in a trance of unity: it is us
traveling birds
 
the contemplative air
above the water:
it’s us
 
the figure in the sketched shadow
wherein two wandering birds have flown
to their perfect identity.
 
 
A Drawing About Skin
 
You draw on my skin a landscape: that black sun,
the dark pine in the forest
of the prodigious mountains.
 
Underneath the drawing
rounds the blood in its ardent
circulation, its secret river.
 
The colors warn
and feed the eyes
in the notebook of my skin.
 
The blood sun reddens.
The pine vibrates in the vital wind.
And the mountains burn moss
 
in whose dampness
and mirages
already spell this morning.


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More poems from Nuevos Himnos a Noche (New Hymns to the Night) by Benjamín Valdivia translated into English by Jaime H. Herrera and Kimberly Williams.

3/29/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
 
Jaime H. Herrera is currently a Professor of English at Mesa Community College. Jaime is a product of the Juárez/El Paso border, a place he holds dear and which embodies who he is, as much Mexican as American, as much Mexicano (and mexinaco) as he is estadounidense (and gringo). He is bicultural and bilingual (and speaks a good Spanglish too). He knows that the border is a space that cannot be fenced. La frontera es un espacio que no se puede cercar. He loves translation, the back and forth between the two languages. Also. he writes his own poetry in both English and Spanish and has written a novel (as of yet unpublished), tentatively titled This is not Juárez. When he dies, he wants his ashes spread right in the middle of the bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, his ashes blowing in both directions.

This week's four poems were primarily translated by Jaime H. Herrera.

***

Edifice of Sadness

 
From your sadness
is erected a wall
and a chain.
 
And neither do I leave the delight
of the world nor board
the ship of the day.
 
Your sadness
in my external world:
the squaring of this slab
 
of irreverent weight
above
everything that I think.
 
There is a dead
bird in
all of this.
 
But you say that
the salt of your impatience
is due to nothing.
 
And I say that the sea
has a few tears
too many.  
 


Response of Things 


When you are not with me, I fall apart
I wander as if without myself through these dark clouds
over the irreparable cold that the night announces.   
 
Because flags sink and the minute is filled with rust
and things don’t understand and are not encouraged
to follow or they decide to be wilted and black.
 
But on your return, in your steps, new like the world
initial, time is clear and things lost in their abyss
respond again, each one, to the names you give them.     
 


 Preparation of the Trip 


I want to understand
the joyful way
through which the year comes.
 
Also the circular
flight
of the sun opening its corolla.
 
Burns in the cold
the same substance
of life trodden to the now
 
and pursue the dreams of someone who trusts
in the highest species
of happiness.
 
Black dots
and unread stains
are warned of in the map.
 
Crosses, the trains
thunderous passing
and birds with black entrails.
 
But at the end of the day
the destiny and the journey are clear
by which we will go.
 
 
 
Terrestrial Time 


We are the arrows
of the dates:
dart of time.
 
But we advance in the dry
night or over the liquid
day.
 
No one repeats the day with us:
new and fresh
in the continuity.
 
Because we roam in the wet
slopes of our mutual
loves.
 
Because we are stronger
than the fires
with which terrestrial time
 
has always wanted us
and wants
and will always want to burn.
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Father’s Day 2016

2/1/2017

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Father’s Day 2016
 
His handwriting had never been good.
He always printed at a slant and had this
way of mixing both capital and lower-case
letters in the same words and sentences.
 
Going through some of his belongings,
I find the pad of legal paper on Father’s
Day, my first without him, his
first without us. He has noted four
 
phone numbers, three with his local
734 area code. He had scrawled
“HYATT--7th & HaGGarTy,” the hotel
we always stayed in when we visited
 
him. And then, below that, the sentence
“Whales live in the blue ocean,” which
is mystifying. Not that they live there,
but that he’d write it, and all in lower
 
case cursive letters, except for the capital
W, these the only other words bobbing
amongst the numerals in the yellow sea
somewhere between the straight blue waves.

 
 
 
 
  
The Truth About
 
And the cat is busy
and why not? Someone is out
there accelerating down Olive Ave.,
driving the machines which provide the sound-
track for my dreams. Why not expect
to be fed at 4 a.m.? Then full,
 
why not stretch into the green throw
blanket and bathe? The dog
will not stir, not even peek one fuzzy
ear over the blanket once. He knows
the truth about 4 a.m. and heaven
knows someone in the house must seek it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Something New Might Be Revealed
 
My ex-husband used to give me this look:
you are over-thinking. He knew better
than to say it aloud. But his silent frustration
 
would indicate that over-thinking is a choice;
that is, I overthink on purpose, which is something .
to think about. And after a long day deliberating,
 
an over-thinker sometimes simply needs to
watch the Family Feud. Another over-thinker
may say that this is rationalizing
 
bad behavior. But it’s not. The over-thinker
stays home and over-thinks, avoids crowds,
which muddle thoughts, and analyzes even
 
the weary traffic light for semantic meaning.
The over-thinker occasionally thinks I need
to get out more. But she usually elects to stay
 
inside and think. For a break, she might read
or re-alphabetize and organize her books.
The enlightened over-thinker will recognize
 
these penchants--will acknowledge them--but
will continue to over-think in her own way:
thinking as illusory means of control: if I think this
 
out in advance, nothing can get me! It’s crap,
of course, especially with our country’s penchant
to terrorize itself any more. (But I digress.) If
 
you are an over-thinker, you have plenty of
company, although this might not occur to you
because you are too busy ruminating to see
 
you are surrounded by over-thinkers each sitting
atop the their own boulder, pondering. The world
is as populated by over-thinkers as Iowa is
 
populated by rows of corn, and the nearest
over-thinker might be as close as your elbow.
Only your thinking blocks the view. But here
 
we are, the rest of the over-thinkers, also
surmising, wondering, wandering solo through
ideas as if exploring a maze of greenery, maybe
 
calculating by woods, or perhaps if you’re
more organized and linear in your thinking,
discerning through symmetrical fields of towering
 
maize, applying meaning willy-nilly, though
we will never admit the willy-nilly part.
 
 
© Kimberly Williams
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At the Hour of the Sea / On Such a Day

1/10/2017

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For the next few issues, I'd like to feature some of the translation work that Jaime Herrera and I have done.  These poems come from the book Nuevos Himnos a la Noche by Benjamín Valdivia.

 ***

Benjamin Valdivia has published numerous books of poetry in Spanish along with many works of drama. He has edited many anthologies and won several awards including the Premio de Poesía por la Accademia Internazionale il Convivio, enItalia, in 2003. He also works as a literary translator and is a full-time professor at University of Guanajuato. He expects to visit the Phoenix area this spring to read and share his work in the U.S. 
 
http://www.valdivia.mx/

***

At the Hour of the Sea
 
 
Over the sacred sheet
on the set table,
same as sustenance,


you search for a navy blue sea,
a warped conch in which you can
find shelter with me.
 
We are standing on the mud
in front of the reconstructed
balcony.
 
That is where love takes its destiny
of doubling--so back and forth
as the lightning rays of the dark monsoon.
 
Two days in one instant:
the middle
of the night.
 
Two bodies in the only living entity
over the undulating sheet
at the hour of the sea.
 
 
 
On Such a Day
 
In the afternoon of a day on such a day as this
I entered the secret stronghold
of your consummation
 
Broken lamps and frayed walls
were for us paradise and were homeland
for our secret.
 
Above, spores burned
left there by the rain
in the rotted beams
 
Below
the bodega was buried
that supplied a city
 
And in the air
scratched – very scratched – from so many swallows
and scandalous youth and shadows,
 
resonated a successive destiny:
the drawbridge to enter by the ladder
of a tower where splendor reigns.


***Jaime H. Herrera bio:
Jaime H. Herrera is currently a Professor of English at Mesa Community College. Jaime is a product of the Juárez/El Paso border, a place he holds dear and which embodies who he is, as much Mexican as American, as much Mexicano (and mexinaco) as he is estadounidense (and gringo). He is bicultural and bilingual (and speaks a good Spanglish too). He knows that the border is a space that cannot be fenced. La frontera es un espacio que no se puede cercar. He loves translation, the back and forth between the two languages. Also. he writes his own poetry in both English and Spanish and has written a novel (as of yet unpublished), tentatively titled This is not Juárez. When he dies, he wants his ashes spread right in the middle of the bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, his ashes blowing in both directions.

​


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    Kimberly Williams

    Kimberly has been fortunate to travel to half the Spanish-speaking countries in the world by the time she was forty. As a traveler into different cultures, she has learned to listen ask questions, and seek points of connections. This page is meant to offer different points of connections between writers, words, ideas, languages, and imaginations. Thank you for visiting. 

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