Poetry Life and Times

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Circuitry. An Excerpt from Cartoon Molecules Collected Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by

Author’s remark: edited text extracts for Circuitry are derived from Super Intelligence Chapter 9 The Controle Problem  Nick Bostrom,  & Paul Mudoon’s Poem Side Project  & based on the thematics from Impressions of Africa by Raymond Roussel

Circuitry

The notion that information being about
a certain topic is problematic
the equivalent to a smiley-face sticker xeroxed
trillions upon trillions of times
and plastered over the galaxies       any piece of information
can in principle be relevant to any topic         whatsoever
depending
on the background information of the reasoner

~ ~ ~

a unicorn
may graze in the dunes
in all their vagaries and never
quite grasp the point
a given datum set contains information
not only from the domain from which it was collected

even orange and lemon moving in their own sphere
who hasn’t woken up screaming in a four poster elephant herd
but also from various circumstantial facts
such that
one might infer from a nominal knowledge base
a variety of a wide range of topics

~ ~ ~

that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
on the Orient Express
at least everyone in the circus crowd
accepts he’s no more than part
of the rank and file
where the fact that some information is included
whilst some information is not

i spotted the Norwegian bareback artiste
with one foot on the unicorn sire
in a figure eight of the elephant folio
could tell about a fabrication that conceived
any knowledge based designation
like your run of the mill Fegee Mermaid
or Pickled Punk malformed in his formaldehyde
as the workings of its own psyche

~ ~ ~

it’s that same Hungarian tune played
on a cornet from a unicorn
that once grazed the dunes in all their vagaries
the design choices reflected in its own source code
and no less proven in battle
the Missing Link        Frog boy
the human chimera and the human alligator
the characteristics of its circuitry
which also allows us to remake ourselves

~ ~ ~

that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
allows us to remake ourselves
as information not only from the domain
a unicorn may graze in the dunes
on the background information of times
plastered over the galaxies on the Orient Express

a bareback artiste with one foot
on any piece of information
which in principle once grazed the dunes
in all their circumstantial facts relevant to
any topic whatsoever

it’s that same Hungarian tune played in battle
the Missing Link    Frog boy     four poster elephant herd
but also Mermaid or Pickled Punk
malformed in all their vagaries
and never quite a variety of a wide range of topics

~ ~ ~

he’s no more than part of certain topic is problematic
the equivalent to the rank and file
where the fact infers from a nominal knowledge base
a characteristic of its circuitry
also on a cornet from a unicorn
the notion that information being about
an information is an information

~~~

i spotted the Norwegian and lemon moving
in their own sphere a unicorn sire
in a figure eight of fabrication
that conceived any knowledge based designation
its own source code and no less proven
a smiley – face sticker xeroxed
trillions upon trillions
the elephant folio could tell about
your run of the mill Fegee
a given datum set formaldehyde
as the workings of its own
human chimera and human alligator vagaries
the design choices reflected in that information is included
whilst some from which it was collected even orange
at least everyone in the circus crowd

~~~

i spotted the Norwegian and elephant herd but also Mermaid
or depending on various circumstantial facts
such that one be relevant to any topic
whatsoever vagaries such as the Orient Express

vagaries

the design choices reflected in its about
an information
an information plastered over the galaxies
plastered over the facts
inferred from a nominal knowledge from which it was collected
that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
whilst some tell about your run of smiley- face sticker
xeroxed trillions upon trillions
that allows us to remake ourselves
as Frog in the circus crowd

in the circus unicorn the notion that information being
a psyche screaming in a psyche
it’s that same Hungarian tune played in battle
the human alligator vagaries
a unicorn may graze in the dunes
sire in a figure eight a fabrication of malformed Pickled Punk
in his all a background information of the reasoner

~ ~ ~

lemon & Orange on the Orient Express moving in their own sphere
Fegee grasps the point a Missing Link Frog boy four poster
who hasn’t woken up screaming conceived in that knowledge
based designation of their own vagaries
a never quite variety of which is also on a cornet from the galaxies

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

galaxies     bareback artiste with one foot on topics       no more than given datum set          as the workings contain information not only from the domain elephant folio characteristic of its circuitry       the wide range of topics   the human chimera        equivalent to the rank and file any piece of information can source a code no less proven

Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.

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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his
work Performance (University of Leeds)

Africa North Poem Excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems

by

 

 
Solstice winds, rain return in spells
a moon waxes full, dogs howl as well.

All the babble of the Souk
men over there, over there women.

All the life of the planet
so little part of it that i breathe.

Weather beaten highlands, once passed through.

The river bed, no more like a parched bone
its late autumnal river meanders as a vein

past four reservoirs

a quest that will end in winter´s flood.

Between them are momentary mists
where brightly clad figures of the north, suddenly dim.

On the frontier’s beach taxis come, go
only the stranded remain, together with the seagulls
four men huddled, drenched in pouring rain
dead once more, again, all pathways home
washed away, again.

A broken song
remember me, sung in a doorway
brings the world at large together
as suddenly as it narrows.

Water runs on marble
nakedness revealed, nakedness concealed
form water words, water memories, mists, fates.

Veins wrestle the marble into mangled knots
blemished pearls on an implacable skin
shards leaving fragmentary traces
empty spaces awaiting faces.

Lights dance in the night, picturesque
“casas blancas del pueblo”
appear through the darkness
as the brush strokes of my mind steal the action of the shadow.

Mists cordon the mountain tops
guerdoned crowns like wreathes.
Ancient fields’ still colours surrounded
by burgeoning new lead to the valley below.

Old women, old as aglow, so slow they go
poised aloof in an untouchable world, trapped.

High in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade
to oversee goats on the hill beneath.

Daughters of necessity naked in the rock
unleashed in white trefoil in the marsh
swamp of night rain, stark where epochs
sleep in their shadows

replication of memories, where the old
becomes the new, a world splits in two
with Morpheus in the breach.

Beyond control, beyond reach the erratic butterfly
flits bloom to bloom, the intrepid stalker with net
both captured in the mimic mould.

A knot is tied, a knot that wrestles
embraces, that ravels birth
unravels death & binds its existence.

Her face is as if a moon glazed over
with a less serene ceramic dust that in the end
after its perplexity contains its surety.

She draws her forefinger laterally across
under her eye lid in a smear
nor can you change the image of what you are
in the pupil of her eye.

Babble bodies blur
voices with their echoes down the street
sky high, prices fly

a bird song breaks, a splash charade.

Faces in the rain thin
weakness of watery years.

A winnowing canvass tosses corn
as fireflies in the blazing day.

The hag in her rags begs her bag
holding all shadows to account.

You sit in the solitary corner
at the empty dice board
to throw, as the music swells, as strings play.

On the washing line clothes of all shapes
sizes are waiting to be filled
suspended between earth, sky, where white sheets blow.

A twinge of nostalgia flashes
a link between a fluttering curtain
an open window frame, a sun shadow game

a flickering apparition pattern leaving only – strands.

A breeze flutters an open foolscap on the table
as though a phantom reader
should flick with regard through a score of notes
then stops at the first blank white sheets

stays, the moving hand that wrote, wrote no more.

On record, old honky-tonk goes on
amidst the heaps of consumer city sneakers
in the same dust where faces
turn from their spring red lustre to a sun soiled wear

through a beehive of alleys
names, aye to fetch them home again
as if where the countless dead resided, you’d said

in a market of women shrouded in shawls.

Berlin falls, Baghdad falls
all the years turn to further tears
further fears to merge with your voyage
the shape of dreams to come

to be only endearments of what has gone before.

A flower opens after a thousand years in a shell of tears
indifferent to its beholders’ sight
who paint it with the colours from the waters of their night

on an unknown shore, to whose sight it opened once before.

Children’s faces like radiant imps
play carefree in the streets below
overhead on red tiles, fat pigeons bicker, coo.

In an internet cafe, an Arab girl discrete in headdress
plays with cartoon molecules of Mickey Mouse
Koala bear

nubile women’s faces dream of nudity in their shrouds.

Wonky pinz nez specs, jumble sale clothes
bad teeth, unshaven grin
looking a faded duplicate of a down
out James Joyce with the come on
are you Irish, he asks
perhaps he was once upon a time.

They came through the cleft of the mountain
– where the river ran
to swim as a blur in the naked purple of the eye

on the mountain face there is a scar
once a sacred place, now extinct, as they are.

Yet wild still she runs, amidst the sheep, goats
toils at the hearth, dutifully bears children
yesterday she knows but not tomorrow
where she hides her sorrow

even as he ploughs the hillside
a photo will steal his soul, but his beasts will do.

Twilight’s girls, girls, girls
throng the bustling street corners eating caracoles.

By day the olive tree green in the blue sky of the window
seems almost immortal enriched with the blood
it’s enriched, now at its roots.

Costa de la playa, white beehives in the sun, all money, no honey.

In the broken lights of the bazaar
the dusky eyes of the beggar sunk in their sockets
maze in crooked cul de sacs embargo amidst
the furls of silk that foil the flickering lantern niche.

In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.

Streets packs ravage carcasses
at dawn, the city wakes to the city’s obedience
to obey its disappearing shadows.

A ghost city of watchers
watched as shadows by a memory that has outlived them
now fragments in an admixture of old, new

– amidst a junk yard of rubble
watcher shadows phased captive to their fading stories.

The street’s mechanics of the day
obey their limits, patterns of parts
where we end only to start in a series of nows

post mortem of the world at large
an autopsy of ghosts on the slab.

Born to see, in the boutiques people seem
like their own mannequins
existence is a mystery with no purpose

only we endow it with a destiny, it does not seek from us.

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
 
 
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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his
work Performance (University of Leeds)

The Art of Deism. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by 

somewhere there’s a context

but how did she get there

where did she come from

she’s as silent as the grave

but drops a few hints    as

the given structure is now

an abstraction		


&


she has already left you

after having created you

through an abstraction

the art of deism	DIY

with whatever tools are

ready to hand   & beat out

       that rhythm on a drum

	          je ne regrette rien

 
 
 

 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
 
 
https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his
work Performance (University of Leeds)

9 more for the road. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop. Excerpt from Off the Menu

by

(i)

enough bread on the window sill
to feed a thousand birds
goat shit in the air
we walk on fetid sewers
like the rats that inhabit them
immuno

O noble savage
what lies beyond the heart of darkness
bonobos!
Elon Musk thinks
we must be in a simulation
otherwise we’d have gone extinct
& he’s footing the bill
we can’t object
to being disembodied brains in vats
on clipboards
anymore than dinosaurs!

(ii)

like a long dead insect
motor cycles in electric windows gleam
as if trying to get on to get off
a swerve
on the hill jammed in the valley
houses stacked like egg boxes
cloud & smoke at the interstices
traffic drone pedestrians cast like shadows
at night orange electrics
hang out converging symmetries
almost ephemerally
i am its inmate its identity
a dark amorphous mass
turning towards a lighted doorway
to scrawl its signature

(iii)

a fictitious identity effacing present
with a replaced distance
yonder
where the moment drifts
a wandering mind
on a happen stance edge
like light on the sea
an ephemeral instance of memory
a dazzling illusion of tongues
stained with the dust of ages
where i walk on sand
hearing those voices fall over
the horizon of this flat world
our mirror neurons
reconstructing a past
as a theatre of ghosts
a semblance
clinging to the threshold of the present
on the precipice of nothingness

(iv)

about

omnicide or superhuman cosmicide
long lived areosols
war of the trawlers
seabed shreds
bots
triffids
a glass house menagerie
we will
open all doors to take away
moments ever had
writ now
signifiers on tabloids
which will be erased
our experience about
& present
in our crooked
corner of the world
as indifferent
as day & night

(v)

head on
all the hype
a tattered flag
a battered form
signal & sign
before ruins
a monolithic artefact
the grain of yesterday’s tears
vanishing on a whim
in a whirlwind of dust
in multiple dusts
every day
the fumes rage
print the page
we rise from with hands
of clay
hang the numbers out to dry
a bag of tricks

(vi)

a lottery tumbler of memory
we choose at random
listen to the echoes
of our idiot dreams
address the parade
of paradoxical masks
sink into our
straight jackets that bind us
to tomorrow’s sky
with its
empty promises from before

(vii)

sex on the beach
a beverage
the sign said
tucked into a snug cove
where we sun our limbs
in wicker seats
with seagulls & snorklers
flipper fins plashing
the glitttering sea
white foam breaking
chiffon on the rocks

we blip a 1,000 selfies
on the jelly roll fleshly
nubile spawning shore
biologically hacked
biologically raped
under a celloid blue sky
buffet on plastic mariscos
before we drift off
towards our yellow beige
alabaster domed cupolas
our palatial hotel chateau
to enter its catacombs
bathed in golden light
like holographic silhouettes
at night rats will scourge
the waterfront promenade
festooning rubbish bins
neglected either by
white linen underpaid
immigrant blacks from
the hotels or pissed off
government employee cleaners

(viii)

GOOD NEWS
New Study / People
eat at least 80,000
plastic particles a year
Story of the week

i rise from my 5 dollar a day
chez longe my 1.50 dollar
a day umbrella shade
to float on the see through sea
spitting out those same particles
washed inshore watching
brown bits of sewage dirt
through the corners of my eyes

( University of Victoria Canada
who led the research
other foods such as bread
processed products
meat dairy & vegetables
may well contain
just as much plastic)

cluster into filmy layers
to coagulate with algae
& mollusk on the rocks
that adorn the bay
& tilting my head
i look outward
to where the sun
will set on a distant isle.

(ix)

nothing is resolved
to be continued
things just get further away
a distance lost
in the translation of the moment
on a qucksilver sand
where memory betrays
the mirror symmetries from before
on this landslide life
where all the riddles remain
which i cannot fish out
from the pond of meaning
to dazzle the day those enigmas
that have shaped me up
to the intangible now that i am
as unexpected their appearance
& disappearance were they can
mean no more purpose for me
but that i was not their cause

      on looking back

       
       

       
       
      Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
       
       
      https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
      https://www.twitter.com/PoetryLifeTimes
       
       
      Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his
      work Performance (University of Leeds)

No Place Like. Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by


 

words at the speed of time
on precipitous edge awnings break
into kaleidoscopic space patterns
there’s no place like sing along
if you are going that way
 
tomorrow’s dawn framed no less forever unborn
 
on the floating horizon of memory
we find to the particular stance added
a wind written on water poem conch
encounter with preceding waves
on the shores of emergences
 
as sudden as nevermore beholds
ongoing to get you where it’s most
but never does never can can dance
because the shiny glistens
 
only because of havoc under wormwood
where the predatory plunders breaches
from niches unto the become assunder
time enough for mourning clouds to rain dust
& footprints fade where words become their fossils
 
 
 

 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
 
 
https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his
work Performance (University of Leeds)

The Poem. Audio Textual. Robin Ouzman Hislop

by

 
 

 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
 
 
https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his
work Performance (University of Leeds)

Almost A Nocturne. A Poem by Noni Benegas Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arrospide and Robin Ouzman Hislop

by

Editor’s note: this poem is a lengthy text, the translation is given first & then the original follows & finally the relevant bio info.
 

                                Almost a nocturne

                                                – and out of dark of night, 
                                   One thing alone grows darker – our eyes. 

                                                          Marina Tsvetaeva 

                “This Minister, in spite of his frivolous air and his polished manners, 
                 was not blessed with a soul of the French type; he could not forget the 
                 things that annoyed him. When there was a thorn in his pillow, he was 
                 obliged to break it off and to blunt its point by repeated stabbings 
                 of his throbbing limbs.”

                                                  Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma

Guilt is an argument
to feel alive...
Fear, another.
Defense, any improvised defense
is another;
being smarter than someone else
(and being told so)
is yet another.
To remember
how we had prepared everything
to write without guilt
instead of loafing about
is perhaps the best argument.
not to sleep a wink
and feel life slip by.

To worry about distant friends
who do not call, not knowing 
if they' re still alive
yet another,
but the maximum argument
to feel alive is to feel
that you're wasting your time.

Any incentive that heals
the "malheur de vivre"
is a force driving the guilt
of being alive
but insufficiently.

To think that nobody cares,
that there is no friend 
aware of you
makes us prone to guilt
which in turn lets us
experience being alive.

I refuse to speak in the first person
because I don't know
if I'm an individual
alive
outside language.

It's the time when wolves
go out to howl at inhospitable
nature …

I barely feel my toes
scratch the edge of the bed
rub each other
like sticks on distant drums.
Their percussion reverberates
through  my body with waxed ears
of a mummy
but more alive,
than Clarice's clock
pounding at dawn.

Nothing makes sense,
Would it,  if I'd lived with you,
X, H or J of my past, present, or future?

And here, I survive
without a dog or cat
or a clock.

But even so
even  if
I waste time on this
my mental calculator
catches on
and condemns me
to experience
the guilt that makes me feel alive
in a bad way...

In this uncertain
existence, to the friend who feeds us
to reinforce their link
while feeding ours,
I reply with warmth
but no tea,
because it keeps you awake
and makes you think
which prevents
living
as something natural.

Living is natural …

Like this light coolness
on my back
and this slight discomfort
of a quilt too warm,

making you successively 
put off and on
words with their doubts, meanderings:
live, living, surviving.

Little by little 
an appetite is born.

I continue living
as I begin to wake up
turning in bed
-left , right-
wanting day to come
promising  “ficar bonito”.


I begin to understand
St John Perse's list of posts ...
It must have been
at dawn,
scattered  like a man's crumbs
through his long lined verse
whose sum make the poem.

And I'm already awake,
while tire wheels roll
like waves on the sidewalk,
behind a closed glass
with a drawn curtain
already standing 
already rhetorical.

Haven't you ever thought of having children
friend ?
you wouldn't be able to sleep at night
for their screams.

But a part of you could do it
although another's life
isn't an argument
to lose sleep over
	or recover it.

There are borders between us,
jagged boundaries as between
	stamps.

I turn off
and on...

the coolness on my back persists...
as if after so much searching
my back was the dark side of the moon
my feet explore
at the bottom of galaxies
through black holes
tunnelling under the quilt
at the edge of the bed.

Between turning on and off
there is a photogenesis of night
that appears
at will.
Click, clack
René Daumal
click, clack
Lota Macedo
click, clack
Oscar Manesi
click, clack
Alejandra Pizarnik
click, clack
me you him
blasphemy
error.

An association is like placing a carriage on a track
to set it in motion...

Thus night rolls
with a click 
like Clarice's clock;
the clock is a camera filming
passing time.

What a big animal
in the dark!

I don't know my limits ...
I turn on the light
for the shameful life
of that autonomous hand
filming
on paper, with pencil,
the poet´s task,
the one who writes
as a movie shot
in which I'm absent.

Only the coolness
and the instep of my right foot
as it molds my left leg's calf
gives me back my limits.

How disgusting life is
when you want to go to the toilet!
But it's just a plane traversing
your hollow belly over the Gulf of Mexico
before the storm
is unleashed.

Not disregarding
that being alive ...
is a way of being
harassed
by terrestrial functions.

Body drifting ...
But there is too much light
to say so.
Night fails
and is rhetorical.
Darkness 
orders and disorders the world
at the same time.

I would like to be hungry
or pee to stand up again
not this coolness without limits.

She/he lied to me
and now they pay the price
by losing the meaning 
of their lie.

The only reason
for being alive
is to whisper these things
	in my ear.

Night is a field
of phosphenes and barbed wire
that starts in  the frontal lobe. 

As long as my mouth
pours this fluidity
from above
I will believe in a soul,
click, clack,
and in Madrid
I switch on
the light
in my Paris room
knowing 
through this touch
I exist
click, clack,
at dawn.

I want to roll myself up in the quilt
in an interspatial rocket
riding the coolness of galaxies ...
Not this earthly
red light
but the dust of stars
precipitated  suddenly blue.

How relative
language is…

Little by little I recover
to form a notion of reality,
to breath for my frontal lobe
so it becomes night once more.
My only privacy
is with myself.

At times I'm so far
I don't  recognize myself,
but they talk to me, watch me
and there I am,
at times I'm so close
I can spare knowing me.

In the morning I will recover
myself
like one who puts her toes
inside the quilt's capsule
so that they form a whole,
so that they complete a whole.

	To the traitor/ess
I do not recognize you
as a person,
you're not on my path
or maybe yes, as one more mask.

This I know now.
I don't  know if I'll know later

when the various layers
of myself 		
	overlap
and I fly over the cosmos
in the space capsule
of my quilt.

But my balance is so delicate
that I can try to be me
again:
some do try again
for the pleasure of recognizing ourselves...

By Noni Benegas. Original: CASI UN NOCTURNO

Translated by Robin Ouzman & Amparo Arrospide

 

                                  Casi un nocturno

                                          y en la noche oscura
                                          nada se cierne más oscuro sobre nosotros
                                          que nuestros propios ojos

                                                        Marina Tsvetaeva

                        "Ese ministro, a pesar de sus modales ligeros y brillantes, no tenía 
                         el alma a la francesa; no sabía olvidar las penas. Cuando en su almohada 
                         había una espina, tenía por fuerza que romperla y gastarla a fuerza de 
                         herir con ella su cuerpo palpitante"

                                                  Stendhal, La cartuja de Parma. 

La culpa es un argumento 
para sentirse vivo…
El miedo, otro.
La defensa, cualquier defensa improvisada
otro;
ser más inteligente que alguien
(y que lo digan)
también.
Recordar cómo habíamos preparado todo
para escribir sin culpa
en vez de haraganear,
el mejor, quizás.
a fin de no pegar ojo
y sentir la vida pasar.

Preocuparse por los amigos lejanos
que no llaman y se ignora si aún viven
también sirve,
pero el argumento máximo
para sentirse vivo es sentir
que se está perdiendo el tiempo.

Cualquier aliciente que cure
del malheur de vivre
es un propulsor de la culpa
del hecho de estar vivo
sin estarlo lo suficiente.

Pensar que a nadie le importa
y no hay amistad
que se interese,
nos hace proclives a la culpa
que a su vez permite
la sensación de estar vivos.

Y me niego a hablar en singular
porque no sé si yo,
fuera del lenguaje,
estoy viva
en particular.

Es la hora en que los lobos
salen a aullar a la naturaleza
inhóspita…

Apenas percibo los dedos de mis pies
que arañan el borde de la cama
y se frotan entre si
como palillos sobre lejanos tambores.
Su percusión reverbera
en mi cuerpo con oídos encerados de momia
más vivo,
sin embargo,
que el reloj de Clarice
palpitando en la madrugada.

Nada tiene sentido.
¿Lo tendría si viviera contigo,
X, H o J de mi pasado, presente, o futuro?

Y aquí
sin un perro ni un gato
ni un reloj a mi alrededor
sobrevivo.

Aún así,
si pierdo el tiempo
la máquina calculadora de mi cerebro
barrunta la falta
y me condena
a la culpa que me hace sentir viva
de mala manera…

Al amigo que nos da de comer
para reafirmar su vínculo
y alimentar el nuestro
le replico, en esta incertidumbre
de existir, con simpatía
pero sin té,
porque quita el sueño
y te hace pensar,
lo cual impide vivir como algo natural.

Vivir es natural…
Como este ligero frescor
en la espalda
y la leve molestia
del edredón demasiado cálido,

que hace que te quites y pongas,
sucesivamente,
las palabras con sus dudas y recovecos:
vivo, viviente, sobreviviente.

De a poco nace
el apetito.

Sigo viviendo
a medida que despierto
y volteo sobre la cama
-izquierda, derecha-
con ganas de que venga el día
y pueda
ficar bonito.

Empiezo a entender
la enumeración de oficios en Saint John Perse…
Tiene que haber sido
de madrugada,
mendrugos de hombre
desparramados en el versículo
cuya suma hace el poema.

Amago levantarme
mientras ruedan neumáticos
como olas en la vereda,
tras el cristal cerrado
con la cortina echada,
ya de pie
y ya retórica.

¿No has pensado tener hijos
amiga ?
no podrías dormir de noche
por sus gritos.

Pero una parte tuya sí podría hacerlo;
aunque no es argumento
la vida ajena
para perder el sueño
        o recuperarlo.

Hay bordes entre nosotros,
límites dentados como entre
        las estampillas.

Apago
y enciendo…

y sigue el frescor en la espalda…
como si después de tanto buscar
fuese el lado oscuro de la luna,
que los pies investigan
al fondo de las galaxias
por los agujeros negros,
túneles bajo el edredón,
hacia el borde de la cama.

Y entre encender y apagar
hay una fotogénesis de la noche
que aparece
a voluntad.
Clic, clac
René Daumal
clic, clac
Lota Macedo
clic, clac
Oscar Manesi
clic, clac
Alejandra Pizarnik
clic, clac
yo, tú, él
blasfemia
error.

Y una asociación es como poner un vagón en una vía
y echarlo a andar…

Así la noche con el clic
rueda
como el reloj de Clarice;
el reloj es la cámara que filma
el tiempo que pasa.

¡Qué animal tan grande
en la oscuridad…!

No conozco mis límites…
Enciendo
para la vergüenza de vivir
de esa mano autónoma filmando
sobre papel, con lápiz,
la tarea del poeta,
del que escribe como una toma de película
en la que no estoy.

Sólo el frescor
me devuelve mis límites,
y el empeine del pie derecho
cuando moldea la pantorrilla
de la pierna izquierda.

Qué asco vivir
cuando tienes ganas de ir al baño!
Pero es sólo un avión que atraviesa
la oquedad de tu vientre como el golfo de México

antes de desencadenarse
una tormenta.

Sin perder de vista
que estar vivo…
es una manera de estar
acosado
por las funciones terrestres.

Cuerpo a la deriva…
Pero hay demasiada luz
para decirlo.
Falla la noche y es
retórico.
La oscuridad
desordena el mundo a la vez
que lo ordena.

Quisiera tener hambre
o pis para reincorporarme
y no este frescor sin límites.

Me mintió
y ahora paga su mentira
con la desaparición del objeto
de su mentira.

La única razón
de estar viva
es poder dictarme estas cosas
              al oído.

La noche es un campo
de fosfenos y alambradas
que empieza en el lóbulo frontal.

Mientras la boca esté derramando
ésta liquidez de arriba
creeré en el alma,
clic, clac,
y aprieto el interruptor
de mi cuarto en París
en otra lámpara
en Madrid,
y sé que existo
por este tacto
clic, clac,
en la madrugada.

Me quiero arrollar en el edredón
con forma de cohete interespacial
para surcar el frescor de las galaxias…
No esta luz colorada
de la tierra
sino el polvo de estrellas,
precipitado súbitamente azul.

Cómo relativiza
el lenguaje…

De a poco me recupero
y cobro noción de lo real;
respiro para mi lóbulo,
para que sea de noche otra vez.
No tengo intimidad
más que conmigo misma.

Y a veces estoy tan lejos
que no me reconozco,
pero me hablan, y miran,
y ahí me encuentro.
Aunque a veces estoy tan cerca
que me eximo de conocerme.

Por la mañana me recuperaré
como quien mete los dedos de los pies
en la cápsula del edredón
para que formen un todo,
para que completen el todo.

     Al traidor/ra
No te reconozco
como persona,
no estás en mi camino
o tal vez sí, una máscara más.

Esto que sé ahora
no sé si lo sabré luego

cuando diversas capas de mi
             se superpongan,
y en la cápsula espacial
de mi edredón conmigo
sobrevuele el cosmos.

Pero mi equilibrio es tan delicado
que yo puedo volver a ser yo:

algunos volvemos a repetirnos
por el placer de reconocernos…

 

 
Noni Benegas, born in Buenos Aires and resident in Spain since 1977, is the author of seven books of poetry; a selection is collected in El Ángel de lo súbito, Ed. Fondo de Cultura Económica, (Madrid, 2014). Burning Cartography, Ed. Host, (Austin TX, 2007 and 2011) is a selection of these poems in English, and Animaux Sacrés, Ed. Al Manar (Séte 2013) in French. She has won the Platero Prize from the UN in Geneva; the Miguel Hernández National Prize for Poetry, as well as Vila de Martorell award, the Rubén Darío Prize from Palma in Mallorca, the Esquío Prize in Galicia. She is the author of the influential anthology of contemporary Spanish women poets Ellas tienen la palabra, Ed. Hiperión (Madrid, 2008, 4th edition) whose introductory essay, with a new prologue, articles, interviews and an epilogue has been recently collected by Ed. Fondo de Cultura Economica in 2017 with the same title. Ellas Resisten. Mujeres poetas y artistas (1994-2019) is a selection of her essays on women writers and artists published by Ed. Huerga & Fierro
 
Editor’s Note: see also Poetry, National Literature Prize 2018, Francisca Aguirre, Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop
 
 

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Amparo Arróspide (Argentina) has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines. She has translated authors such as Francisca Aguirre, Javier Díaz Gil, Luis Fores and José Antonio Pamies into English, together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, who she worked with for a period as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, at Artvilla.com a Webzine. Her translations into Spanish of Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House), James Stephens (Irish Fairy Tales) and Mia Couto (Vinte e Zinco) are in the course of being published, as well as her two poetry collections Hormigas en diáspora and Jacuzzi. She takes part in festivals, recently Transforming with Poetry (Leeds) and Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).

robin-portrait-july-sotillo-2016-by-amparo

https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
https://www.twitter.com/PoetryLifeTimes

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)



			


					
			





	

					

				
Spike. Excerpt from Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop
		

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A runaway on a Singularity slippery slope need not be a despairingly

Sisyphean slide back but spike upward to an extremely great verticality

allowing something relatively harmless today start a trend that results

in something currently unthinkable a – Pandorean pandemonium


still he didn’t want to kill himself and his crew so he hatched a plan

that systems possessing the same patterns of causal organization will instantiate

the same types of conscious states irrespective of whether the organization

is implemented in neurons – silicon – plastic or any other substrate


taken to its heart we would vanish into its stronger existence – do the angels

really only take back what is theirs – what has streamed out of them – or is there

sometimes – as if by oversight something of our being as well? – do we not see

the swirling return to ourselves (how should we see it?) the world today being

as it is a vast unsupervised laboratory – in which a multitude of experiments

are simultaneously under way


brain-computer interfaces have already left the laboratory which allows gamers

to interact directly with their consoles – a high resolution neuro-signal

acquisition and processing wireless neuroheadset uses a set of sensors to tune

into electric signals produced by the brain to detect player thoughts feelings

and expressions and connects wirelessly to most PCs’ — all this for only $299!


partly this is because we cannot agree on what such purposes are – and even if

we were to – suddenly he knew that when he heard the music he would be unable

to resist steering toward the island’s rocks – the problem wasn’t the present

rational Ulysses – but instead the future illogical Ulysses – the person he’d become

when the Sirens came within earshot


but that is the gods’ affair – if only we too could discover a pure contained – human

place – a strip of fruitful land of our own – between river and stone!- for our own heart

exceeds us – the curve of the graph grows exponentially steeper – until that spike is

the Singularity – beyond the veil of the opaque wall – the unthinkable – the horizon

of the final dawn looms – lanced on the spear of the terrible angel.


After Rainer Maria Rilke. Duino Elegies


https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes


https://www.twitter.com/PoetryLifeTimes


Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include


All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.


You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)


 


			


					
			





	

					

				
Poems from Angel Minaya’s Collected Poems TEOREMA DE LOS LUGARES RAROS (Theorem of rare places) Translated from Spanish by Robin Ouman Hislop & Amparo Arróspide
		

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1.

lugar es una casa para poner un codo no deja de dañar la mesa también sobre los

huesos un palo sus balances


lugar es una puerta para esconder la carga perdura en la cabeza aislada el rastrillo de la

deuda tatúa las membranas


lugar es una ventana para poner un caballo un libro alguna cosa


(i)


place is a house to place an elbow the table never leaves off hurting it´s also a stick

on the bones balance sheets


place is a door to hide the burden on an isolated head the rake of debt lingers

tattooing membranes


place is a window to place a horse a book some thing


2.


un niño pasea por las orillas del légamo se parece a mi sombra tiene miedo pero no corre

tal vez sus pies han oído el acre perfume de la ova animales suaves se agitan en el cañizal

un ciervo tendido va confundiéndose con las hojas caídas su cuello muestra linfas secretas el

sol cruje con la intensidad de la corteza columpios oxidados anticipan la ruina de los juegos

juegos solitarios donde el niño me imagina soñando con orillas recordando carroñas sin volumen

el agua verdinegra que el verano va cociendo ambos somos un sueño compartido por el otro

observados bajo las cañas por los ojos feroces de nuestra madre


a child passes silted shores seeming like my shadow he’s afraid but doesn’t run perhaps his

feet have heard the acrid perfume of the ulva soft animals tremble in reed banks a deer

lying down mingles with fallen leaves his neck revealing a secret lymph sun crackles through

intensity of bark rusty swings herald a ruination of games solitary games where I’m imagined

by the child to be dreaming of these shores a massless memory of carrion the summer’s

blackgreenish water is baking we are both a dream shared by the other watched under the

reeds by the fierce eyes of our mother


3.


 Conferencia austro-húngara [apuntes]


antes de comenzar imaginemos

pensar en húngaro o escribir en alemán


alguien recoge lo que ama y lo corrige

alguien hubiera preferido someter a reconstrucción una pared escarpada

y ahora yo llevo bajo el brazo

el vínculo entre la fuerza y la risa


el caso es

de dónde procede este placer

después de qué aniquilación maduran los conceptos

por qué admiramos los átomos o la madrugada


queridos colegas

por) un agresor ha sido devorado

como) la frialdad de las madres es comparable a las máquinas zapadoras

en) lo que permanece dentro siempre resulta victorioso


en fin por) como) y en) prueban que una idea es lo más parecido a una cicatriz

o a un sueño que dura ya 51 años


en alemán los ahogados

beben hasta que les llega la muerte

en húngaro los mensajes indirectos acaban alojándose

en órganos e inervaciones habituales


buenas tardes y gracias a todos

por su aflicción


 Austro-Hungarian Conference [Notes]


before we begin let us imagine

thinking in Hungarian or writing in German


someone picks up what they love and corrects it

someone would have preferred to rebuild a steep wall

and now I’m carrying under my arm

the link between strength and laughter


the case is

where does this pleasure come from

after what annihilation do concepts mature

why do we admire atoms or the dawn


dear colleagues

by) a foe has been devoured

as) the coldness of mothers is comparable to trenching machines

in) what remains inside is always victorious


hence by) as) and in) prove that an idea is the closest thing to a scar

or a dream that has already lasted for 51 years


in German the drowned

drink themselves to death

in Hungarian indirect messages end up occupying

the usual organs and innervations


good evening thank you all for listening

and thank you all for your suffering


4.


 Apuntes catastróficos


contraimagen en el observador nace un estado de malestar o acantilado


contradicción la luz sobre el terraplén se degrada en movimiento


estímulos la vida es una erosión subterránea equivalente al plano inclinado de la

angustia


contragolpe un árbol despliega la tierra rota en dirección al sol blanco de la

analogía


contrapunto los dominios zoológicos se ramifican y expanden como nudos que se

persiguen


impresiones la caza y los territorios acumulan conglomerados de mapas y

desprendimientos


contrasentido un cono o pirámide de escombros pasa de la regularidad a la máxima

turbulencia


contraataque el observador es una trampa para frecuencias de lenta degradación


reducto un germen de catástrofe en favor de la excitación y el desorden


 


Catastrophic Notes


counter image a cliff state or discomfort is born in the observer


contradiction the light on the embankment degrades in movement


stimuli life is an underground erosion equivalent to the inclined plane of anguish


countercoup a tree displays broken earth towards the white sun of analogy


counterpoint zoological domains ramify their expansions pursued as knots


impressions hunting and territories accumulate clusters of maps and landslides


countermeaning the debris of a cone or pyramid goes from regularity to maximum turbulence


counterassault the observer is a trap for frequencies of slow degradation


stronghold a germ of catastrophe in favor of excitement and disorder


5.


 Equivalencia en hueco


[nada] evento de la palabra que lo pronuncia [nunca] agujero o gusano de tiempo oscuro [nadie]

impensada extensión de una antinomia que se fue [nulo] valor absoluto del abandono [pérdida]

extravío en la dirección apropiada [mudez] propósito semántico del niño en silencio [se]

impersonal atavismo del aullido [cero] punto lógico del número a su saco [no] jaque a la

tercera persona oblicua [yo] identidad imaginaria de la cópula y la disyunción [negro] color

automático de las orillas en materia de movimiento [vacío] mensaje contracto del negativo de

los objetos [incógnita] conjunto dispar de soluciones y raíces antes del árbol [significado]

liquidar el poema de materia oscura


del doble tan raro

decirse no expresarse

aunque [yo] estuviera allí


 


 GAP-IN EQUIVALENCE


[nothing] an event from the word that articulates it [never] a dark time or worm hole [nobody]

an unthought extension of a vanished antinomy [null] the absolute value of abandonment [loss]

a misplacement in the proper direction [muteness] the semantic intention of a child’s silence

[self] an impersonal atavistic howl [zero] the number’s logical point in its sac [not] the

oblique third person placed in check [i] imaginary identity of conjunction and disjunction

[black] the automatic color of edges in the materialisation of motion [vacuum] a message shrunk from the

negatives of photographic objects [unknown] a disparate set of solutions and roots preceding

their tree [meaning] to wipe dark matter out of the poem


by such a rare double

to tell oneself not to express oneself

even though as if [i] was there


6.


 WCW 1963 


amo las cosas esas cizañas que no dejan ver el mar el sabor oculto de las fresas perceptible

solo en su consumación el zorzal una danza leve en la luz amarilla


hoy una mano escribe y la otra me hace viva la muerte


en otro tiempo el día era el ascenso mis manos ayudaban a nacer palpaban el dolor y la noche

el descenso la medida variable de los huesos quebrados por la música


ahora el perro y la fiebre la oscuridad extensa donde nada tiene cura


van cayendo los ciegos los aros giran la espalda del desierto es la tortuga que sostiene el

mundo


WCW 1963


i love things those ryegrasses not letting you see the sea hidden taste of strawberries

perceptible only in their consummation a thrush a light dance in the yellow light


today one hand is writing and the other is making death alive for me


in another time a day was the ascent my hands helped to give birth they touched pain and night

the descent the variable measure of bones broken by music


Now the dog and the fever a vast darkness where nothing can be cured


the blind are falling rings are turning round the spine of the desert is the turtle supporting

the world

***


Translations from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop


***




ANGEL MINAYA (Madrid, 1964), a Bachelor in Hispanic Philology by the Complutense University of

Madrid, was also awarded in PhD in Linguistics by the Autonomous University of Madrid.

A teacher of Literature and Language at a high school in that same Community, some of his poems

and critical reviews have been published by Nayagua literary e-zine. A few have also been

included in the anthology Voces del extremo: Poesía y desobediencia (Madrid, 2014).

Teorema de los lugares raros (Theorem of rare places) is his first published poetry collection

(El sastre de Apollinaire, Madrid, 2017).

http://www.elsastredeapollinaire.com/producto/teorema-de-los-lugares-raros/

https://www.facebook.com/angel.minayaechevarrena


 


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Amparo Arróspide (Argentina) has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines. She has translated authors such as Francisca Aguirre, Javier Díaz Gil, Luis Fores and José Antonio Pamies into English, together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, who she worked with for a period as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, at Artvilla.com a Webzine. Her translations into Spanish of Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House), James Stephens (Irish Fairy Tales) and Mia Couto (Vinte e Zinco) are in the course of being published, as well as her two poetry collections Hormigas en diáspora and Jacuzzi. She takes part in festivals, recently Transforming with Poetry (Leeds) and Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).


robin-portrait-july-sotillo-2016-by-amparo


https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

https://www.twitter.com/PoetryLifeTimes


Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include


All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist  and the recently published Tesserae  , a translation

of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.


You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)




			


					
			





	

					

				
Poems from Laura Giordani translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop
		

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Language is the territory of the common, of the community. Through my writing I try to make  visible not only what is not so due to our sensory handicap, but what has been made invisible: small daily holocausts, omissions, our most intimate violence.


Poetic language contains the seed of insubordination, of becoming disobedient to a way of  looking at the world and naming it; politics is the place where we situate ourselves to articulate as speakers, enlightened, subaltern, omniscient, decentered, etc.




It does not matter if we do it about a bird, a milk tooth or an intimate event. In my opinion, the political load of a poem is not dependent on certain topics, but on the insistence that invites us to breathe in a system that otherwise suffocates us, to resist so that we don’t let our eyelids drop in resignation.


Editor’s Note: extract from an interview with Laura Giordani. http://www.tendencias21.net/ Laura-Giordani-La-poesia- contiene-la-semilla-de-la- insumision_a13660.html


————————–


(i.)


[Qué te hicieron caballito, que las manos de tu amo


se hundan en tu carne abierta


hasta que llore polvo de ladrillo,


hasta que la fusta con que te azotaba


caiga con él de rodillas.


Con manos imantadas


Hundir los dedos en la tierra negrísima de la infancia, Cuando las yemas ardan, escarbar con manos imantadas por una ternura abandonada junto a los restos: el desguace nuestro.


Botones sueltos, fotografías de familia: los esposos en un muelle con cuatro hijos y dos baúles, un viejo de ojos claros junto a su silla de enea, escarpines de lana amarilleando sin término, el ajuar con las mismas iniciales de aquel ataúd chiquito y blanco.


Un mechoncito rubio en la mano, único consuelo.


Mujeres pariendo en camas de hierro, niños amamantados por cabras.


[veni, sonnu, di la muntanedda


lu lupu si mangiau la picuredda


oi ninì


ninna vò fa1


A la infancia a través de las manos, palpar el fondo de los cajones para conocer el revés nuestro, las costuras de un relato siempre en hilachas.


Ella se fue y algo se rompió dentro


[algo sordo, como llorando.


Escondimos las rodillas lastimadas por el pavimento.


Llegaron como una peste las palabras y las llevamos a la boca creyendo en su alimento.


Los contornos adquirieron relieve, los pétalos del corazón fueron cayendo –uno a uno—como en aquel juego.


Sobrevino la sintaxis, la separación, el desastre.


[La guardiana del tacto] 




1. Nota: Canción de cuna siciliana. Oh, ven, sueño, de la montañita / El lobo se comió a la ovejita / Oh, el niño /Quiere dormir.


(i.)


[What did they do you little horse that the hands of your master


should sink into your opened flesh


until it weeps brick dust


until the whip with which he lashes you


falls with him to his knees.


With magnetised hands 


To sink our fingers into the blackest earth of childhood, when fingertips burn, hands magnetised by a discarded tenderness that dig searching the remains – our scrap.


Loose buttons, family photographs: spouses on the quayside with four children, two trunks, an old man with clear eyes next to his wicker chair, woollen stockings forever fading, the trousseau with the same initials as that little white coffin, a little lock of blonde hair held in the hand their only consolation.


Women giving birth in iron beds, children suckled by goats.


[veni, sonnu, di la muntanedda


lu lupu si mangiau la picurredda


oi nini


ninna vó fa*


Childhood reached through our hands feeling the bottom of drawers


knowing our underside, the seams of a story always in rags.


She left and something broke inside.


[something deaf, as if weeping


We hid our knees scraped on the pavement.


Words came like a disease, we put them in our mouths believing in their nourishment.


Outlines became distinct, one by one, as in that childhood game, the petals of innocence fell.


Then syntax, separation, disaster.


[The Guardian of Touch]


* Sicilian Lullaby. Oh come, sleep, from the little mountain/The wolf ate the little lamb/Oh, the child/Wants to sleep.


(ii.)








Con guantes de goma anaranjada ella ahogaba los cachorros recién nacidos en el fuentón de lata: no son puros, seguro que fueron los perros de Moroni – sentenciaba y aguantando la respiración hundía a los perritos todavía ciegos, buscando el calor de la collie que aullaba junto a la puerta. Anegaba sus pulmones en el fondo hasta que flotaran y los metía en una bolsa de nylon que cerraba con nudos bien apretados. Luego se sacaba los guantes color naranja y con esas mismas manos cortaba el pan y trenzaba el pelo de mi amiga Alejandra.


[Todavía me persigue el llanto de aquella perra,


el frío mortal del lavadero.


Mi amiga creció, tuvo hijos, otra casa. Su madre siguió baldeando con desvelo la vereda cada mañana, ahogando – primavera tras primavera—perros sin raza.


[Extraño país]


(ii.)


With orange rubber gloves, she, my friend’s mother, drowned the new born pups, in a tin basin.


These are mongrels, sure from old Morini’s, she judged, as she held her breath to drown the still blind puppies as they searched the warmth of the collie, who howled beside the laundry door.


She flooded their lungs in the bottom until they floated putting them into a nylon bag that she tied in the tightest of knots.


Afterwards, she took off those orange rubber gloves and with the same hands cut bread and braided  my friend Alejandra’s hair.


[Now the howl still haunts me


deadly cold in the wash place.


My friend grew up, had children, another house. Her mother continued every morning to thoroughly wash the pavement down drowning spring after spring mixed breeds.


[ Strange Country]


(iii.)


El sobretodo azul que pusiste


sobre los hombros de la muchacha aquella


volvía empapada del interrogatorio


temblando


la mojaban la picaneaban*


cada noche


la dejaban junto a tu colchón


con un llanto parecido al de un cachorro


ese gesto a pesar del miedo


a pesar del miedo te sacaste el sobretodo azul


para abrigarla


no poder dejar de darle ese casi todo


en medio del sobretodo espanto


la dignidad puede resistir


azul


en apenas dos metros de tela


y en esos centímetros que tu mano


sorteó en la oscuridad hasta sus hombros


sobre todo


[El sobretodo azul]




(iii.)


The blue overcoat you put on
 over the shoulders of the girl
 soaked from interrogation
 shaking
 watered tortured with the picana1
 each night
 they´d left her next to your mattress
 with a puppylike whimper
 that gesture despite the fear
 over all the fear you took off your blue overcoat
 to warm her
unable to resist giving over all
over all the horror
in its midst
dignity can stand
blue
in just two meters of cloth
those centimeters your hand
covered in the dark over her shoulders
over all else.


[The blue overcoat]




1 The “picana” is a wand or prod that delivers a high voltage but low current electric shock to a torture victim.




 


laura


 


Laura Giordani (1964, Córdoba, Argentina)


Because of the Argentine military dictatorship, in the late 1970s she went into exile with her family in Spain, where she has lived almost half  her life.

She studied Psychology, Fine Arts and English language.

She participates in writers´meetings and gives poetic recitals in Argentina and Spain.

She has written the following poetry collections: Apurando la copa (2001), Celebración del brote (2003), Cartografía de lo blando (2005), Noche sin clausura (2006), Sudestada (2009), Materia oscura (2010) and Antes de desaparecer (2016).

Her poems have been included in several anthologies, she has also collaborated in journals from Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Spain.




The following link reviews her latest work  Antes de desaparecer ( Before disappearing) from which the above poems are extracts  http://www.tendencias21.net/Antes-de-desaparecer–de-Laura-Giordani-una-manera-de-ampararse_a32021.html


 


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Amparo Arróspide (Argentina) has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines. She has translated authors such as Francisca Aguirre, Javier Díaz Gil, Luis Fores and José Antonio Pamies into English, together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, who she worked with for a period as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times,at Artvilla.com a Webzine. Her translations into Spanish of Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House), James Stephens (Irish Fairy Tales) and Mia Couto (Vinte e Zinco) are in the course of being published, as well as her two poetry collections Hormigas en diáspora and Jacuzzi. She takes part in festivals, recently Transforming with Poetry (Leeds) and Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).


robin-portrait-july-sotillo-2016-by-amparo

 

 

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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include

 

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as  Key of Mist  and the recently published Tesserae  , a translation

of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

 

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.  See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)