3 Poems by Oriette D’Angelo Translated from the Spanish by Lupita Eyde-Tucker
Landscape with Two Tombs and an Assyrian Dog
(brief homage to Lorca)
Far too long I loved a man
with brown eyes hooked tongue
ribcage of serrated knives
Loved him since my body’s last orbit
since my tongue exploded
since the shout
So then how do I get up
from this highway of bones?
How do I point my nose towards the lacerated sky?
How do I choose the final resting place for my hands?
How do I forget help me to forget
How does one roam the sky outside a window?
I lie down and hear howls
hear the fingernails inside my womb
they claw me girl
they claw me whole
since the coldest friction
since the arrow landed
I lived one hundred years inside a knife
and I still don’t awaken from death
a husband smashes into the glass
You asked me once
about my country
about the sorry condition
of our winters
One day you said the sky didn’t make sense
and the next day you stopped switching on the light
How can you, then, question my shadow?
*
Scalpel
Holding the word scalpels on trembling lips
Stand straight, look me in the eye and say goodbye.
‘Jigsaw”
MARILLION
I toast the womb that bled for a year
and for the wound of that day that still bares its bones
for the stomach that cramps each time words burn
the scars on my legs as they march off-step
the pain of returning to a darkened house
and the glass of water that no one retrieved from my bedroom
for all that grieves my kitchen
because I’m almost never hungry
for my overdue expiration date
the umbilical cord that I ripped off with my teeth
for this uterus gnawed by over-examination
too much female condition
too much male condition
too much condition of knives
I raise a glass because you can die from hurricanes
die of country
/healthy body
/happy body
All the scars can be sacrificed for naught
all the landscapes by neither
no earthquake for your earthquake
all my anxieties for nothing
yet faced with the fear of the scalpel, I burst
and bleed
*
Dear Leticia
For Leticia Cortes
We have in common being women
and the need to suffer
to be understood
You taught me to believe in blue angels
the home pages of blogs
and the music of Lifehouse
You taught me that thirteen
can also be delirious
to suffer from to find
that birds have heavy gears
for wings
We have in common the absence
and the losses
in how consistent we are to leave
without caring
We have in common
the word trapeze
and the hurried jump
of a suicide cat
Dear Leticia:
I look so much like you
that sometimes I say “slash”
I invoke your name
I throw my body into space
and I find myself
Dear Leticia:
just like it happens to you
every pain has its site
but my places are never the same
I look so much
like you
that disease makes me panic
that I wake from a hypochondriac dream
I rock in the silence of a shared bedroom
and break into sobs
break into tremors
break into bone
break into your name
You were the first to write me
to ask if I felt
that blood is a cluster of birds
You were the first to bang on the door
pixellating space
to show me your huge eyes
and invite me to believe in your name
Dear Leticia:
you look so much
like me
that sometimes I say “Ana”
I say “disorder”
I say “dread”
and I locate myself.
ORIETTE D’ANGELO (Author) (Caracas, 1990) is a PhD candidate in Spanish Literature at the University of Iowa and the editor of both the literary magazine Digo.palabra.txt and the research and broadcasting project #PoetasVenezolanas. She has an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from the University of Iowa, and an MA in digital communication and media arts from DePaul University. She is the author of two collections of poetry and two chapbooks, and she edited an anthology of young Venezuelan poets called Amanecimos Sobre la Palabra (Team Poetero Ediciones, 2017). Her poems have appeared in anthologies in Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, and Ecuador. Her website is http://www.oriettedangelo.com.
LUPITA EYDE-TUCKER (Translator) (New Jersey, 1971) is an Ecuadorian-American poet who writes and translates poetry in English and Spanish. Her poems have appeared in Nashville Review, Columbia Journal, Raleigh Review, Women's Voices for Change, [PANK], American Life in Poetry, The Cortland Review, MER, and Ninth Letter. Since 2018 she has been translating Venezuelan poet Oriette D’Angelo. Mother to five children, Lupita is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Florida, where she teaches creative writing. Lupita has received fellowships and institutional support from Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Bread Loaf Writers Conferences, the NY State Summer Writers Institute, and Vermont Studio Center. Read more of her work here: www.NotEnoughPoetry.com