Dossier: Colombian Poetry
-
The Magdalena River / is comprised of twelve million liters of golden sluggishness, / seducing the mountains / until her embrace with the sea. -
What follows is a work of words, manifested from diverse points of power, that names what passes through us and what contains us. -
Is counting bodies the same / as counting rocks at night? / The focused gesture of counting / —piece by piece— / is it the same? -
Welcome to this house / your home, / here you breathe the bitter cold / of that absent breath. -
They say the last flame / will ignite / in the ocean. -
i try a word that names you / a word / that inhabits your whole being / that flees from the form / and replaces your absence -
Song of childhood: smoking skin’s opium and drinking the last drop of blues from the darkest bottle in a Louisiana bar. Lung muzzled while the gramophone plays Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday. -
Also remember, María, / four in the afternoon / in our scorched port. -
Pick up the thread / thread the needle / bind all the fears together with yawns -
At its corners, / there’s no movement to recall / the drawn-out breathing of other days. / Not even air brings news of its dead. -
We all have a pair of shoes that call for downpours / the whitest pair / the ones that track in the most from the street -
Without them it wouldn't be what it is: / the open mouth of a wolf, / the apathetic look of an eye socket. -
Welcome, perfect unreality, / dilution of certainty in angelic smokes, mirage, / clarity mutating towards absolute darkness. / Welcome, inconsistency of touch, dubious vision / saving us from dogma, /... -
The other day at the Court House he barked / as the flames blistered his snout. / Sniffed the ones lined up and transferred / to the blind house on the corner, / where he’d often wag his tail / in mil... -
Rain: / anoint my skin / wash my eyes. / My night opens / for you. -
After writing on paper the word coyote / You must watch out that the meat-craving word / Does not take over the page...
