La Bajo

Language of Travel

2012-01-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

Train to Montauk

2012-01-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

Olson, Gloucester.

2011-10-17T09:15:00.003-06:00

It has been half a decade, or more, since I touched my feet to the sand on a beach. Singing beach: the humidity, the size of the grains, the wind, the shape of the sand (round) and the friction produced by walking can cause the beach to sing, to bark. To visit Gloucester, MA. To come to a talk at the Museum about Olson and place. To think about the "open field" and the "everything" which is language, geology, geography. Walking. Taking walks with no purpose, only to listen to the sand. The narratives in the fibers, alway together, always plural. Human geography.

Massachusett & Wampagnoag. Greek. Gaelic & Spanish. No one knows about cava because poets drink beer and Jameson. No one knows the properties of bubbles and the tartness of a liquid which tastes cheap but looks expensive. There was a party and there were young people and grown poets. A brown woman drinking champagne. An Asian sister looking after her baby. Was she a poet? Women and hosting. Women who think about food and their children. The poet Amanda Cook ordered pizza and brought me sushi (gluten and dairy allergies). We talked about place and architecture. I tried to fill her in on what the men were talking about (as if it mattered, as if we didn't have our own language and our own moments). Space and Time, somehow. Vertical "open field" and Umberto Eco. It's hard to not feel gendered. It's hard to not think of this when going to the writing.

It seems that Olson made a choice. The choice to live in Gloucester and to write from an experience of "place" and that such writing is only possible when you are the place and you are everything. What would Iain Sinclair or Olson say about writing when the everything is blurry or traumatic? Iain would say that the view underwater is always blurry and that in a way the point is not to evolve out of the ocean but to return. To write by gazing, as Olson did, but inside the mother.

1st Piece of Mail

2011-07-19T09:42:00.002-06:00

So the first piece of mail I get at my new residence is poetry -how auspicious! I received a chapbook and a book of poetry from none other than Sophie Mayer, all the way from London. You can visit her website (which is quirky and awesome) here. Her book, The Private Parts of Girls out by Salt Publishing, bringing you poetry and poetics since the times of Salt Magazine.

The book is gorgeous. I insisted in reading it only while drinking coffee in Cambridge and I stuck to it. Finished it this past weekend. I like to describe it as follows: it's like my own chapbook got over her daddy issues, finally graduated college, had several lovers and moved to London. In short this book is disorienting, teasing, mature and oceanic. There is tons of water all around and inside of it. Sophie is a mermaid on land and the language here is sonorous and ondine. That's only half of it - the latter half. As if the book pours into a deeper and more marine voice. I love all the sound play in it, in a way in which only a Brit can achieve. I read the book sometimes in an accent, and in her voice. I was drinking coffee but kept stealing swigs off Derek Fenner's fizzy lemonade when I came across this:

And yet my favorite thing of all is reading the chapbook she sent me, which I keep by my bedside and read slowly, like the drip of a wet bathing suit on a hook. It has this lovely bead detail on the spine which I adore and will undoubtedly try on something one of these days. Thanks for so much loveliness, Sophie Mayer.

Mi casa es

2011-07-12T21:40:00.000-06:00

Lucy the Olympia De Luxe

Self-healing mat from Kozo

Bookmaking tool cases. So colorful.

"Wolves" by Phosphorescent, translated and transcribed with text super imposed.

Divinations & Etimology

2011-06-13T15:29:00.003-06:00

The month of June is bringing Lady Luck around, that's for certain. Whether she'll be a poised, elegant, sequined evening gown-clad mistress or a ripped stockings wearing, boozed-up strumpet, well... that's really up to her. I'm lighting a candle just the same.

In Spanish, the word "azar" refers to this concept. Chance and hazard all rolled up into one. Which is to say that this word, which is different from the alternative "suerte" or "fortuna" is keeping track of this unpredictable energy. From the Arabic az-zahr meaning die, or the gaming six-sided cube, probably from an earlier Persian, a‘dād, meaning number. Which is where Spanish gets their word for dice, "dado". Which, in turn has another sense, it can also mean given.

Speaking of Azar, or that which is given. I got my June divination from Selah Saterstrom today. It is free and magical - my favorite two things. Her blog "La La La La..." has moved to wordpress, which we are sad about, but it's just as magical. She is collaborating with Lou Florez on this new venture. The blog has a monthly divination column. I re-posted mine (for this month) below. I hope some day there will be a book of these. To get your own free and wonderful June divination, go here.

All Things Are Yours. Helene Cixous wonders what we are doing while waiting to write the book (other than keeping our appointment with writing the book and doing so). The big life happens in the one you are in, no other! (if you could make yourself the center of your world, if you could live that way, in a way that contradicts some of your present choices, everything would integrate).

Butterfly. Ask your thinking – your thinking patterns – to be in service of your truth. In other words – how does your thinking create stories/narratives that reinforce old wounds and don’t serve your moment? Asking your thinking to be in service of your truth instantly creates boundaries and also creates an opening for you to be heard (most especially by yourself).

Candy Cane. The candy cane was a body punch used by Sugar Ray Robinson (thrown with a right hand to the body slightly turning it over and pushing downward).
If you are a boxing fan than you know that often in the 3rd or 4th round of a decent match both fighters are so exhausted that there is a moment when they don’t appear to be fighting at all, but embracing – rather like slow dancing. That tender fabric between fighting and surrender – wrap yourself in it and allow the changes to happen.

Mills

2011-06-03T07:49:00.000-06:00

Thinking about place. Mountains are snow capped here and I think about Bhanu's poem, one that I translated, that is about place and naming.

Threads are a continuous bound line. Made by fibers. Women have been weavers and garment makers. We make and unmake gossip and rumor. Also think about Ntozake Shange's novel and their weavers.

How narrative does not stop at the loom or needle. Speaking of fibers and fabric as women's work and not art but craft. Having returned to that fabric shop and paid entirely too much for jersey. Damn. And Caridad has kept her promise, she's writing again.

Moving away from mountains, towards a Mill. It is no longer May and I can write now. I can write love.

Pero por que te cambiaste el apellido?

2011-06-02T01:09:00.000-06:00

Blogdrama

2011-04-12T21:36:00.001-06:00

Open letter to the darling Sam Columna,

I spent quite a bit of time that night, discussing your reading. I was pissed. Not because I didn’t like the work but because of my inability to stop you from continuing to read not just past my limit of tolerance for references to male genitalia in a single sitting, but past the gracious 5-7 minutes we were all allotted-with only two exceptions, Bhanu and Sommer. I was pissed because I didn’t have a good reason to interrupt your reading even though I wanted to. At least I didn’t have one that would justify my doing so without being a complete ass. I have no interest in that. Serena had the right. Daniel had the right. As seen by me, but perhaps if Daniel and Serena were asked about it they would disagree with me about “having the right” to stop your reading at the 10-minute mark, but for that answer, you must ask them.

Let me clarify: I think it is a sense of entitlement that allowed you to continue reading beyond the time that we were given and beyond Bhanu’s chuckled-over call for only one more. This is not a novelty. I am a woman of color living in the United States of America. People continually feel entitled to sequestering my attention. There are mechanisms of privilege and oppression around me that make it extremely difficult to decide how my body is going to be utilized when encountering information. I felt subjected to your work and not an audient to it. Much like one is subjected to a pap smear. Helplessly pried open with a speculum, prepped for the scraping of my non-phallic parts, my female difference exposed, examined, albeit with my reluctant consent. Sexism works this way, by a circular reminder of what a woman is less-than, not same-as or not comparable to penis. The same language that calls attention to my marginality, places the phallus (to hearken back to Serena’s Hinduism) at the epicenter. My whole aesthetics is based on how to usurp that phallic symbolic language, within poetry. Sexual assault victims have been interrogated-will continue to be interrogated- as to whether or not they ever, consciously or unconsciously, gave a motive that would lead the perpetrator to think the victim asked for the unwanted attack on their bodies. Sam it’s not that your reading was bad, it was inescapable to me, and that powerlessness closely resembles my experience of victimization. That’s not what bothers me the most. What is more irritating to me is the blithe ignorance of how much space the penis was taking up in our consciousness, once again and no contest from anyone about it not being okay. So it isn’t the fact that your work found a way to repeat images that don’t push the tender buttons I like to be pushed, lame pun intended. It is the fact that here there I was, once again, petrified to move, to say stop, to fight back the swing of the male pendulum in my direction. This I call male privilege. This pisses me off.

I thought about something that Daniel McDonald said to me in response to my complaints, “You should have said something.” More or less-that night I bought a bottle of champagne and imbibed and may not recall exactly. I thought about that. Yes, it was my right to speak up afterwards. Maybe even during. Then I thought about something Danielle Vogel said, “It would have just taken one of them to not hit her and the whole narrative would have changed.” She was referring to the males in Bhanu’s impromptu performance. Yes. How would my speaking up possibly change anything? I am not sure that I would have changed the narrative at all. Yet, that interruption is just the sort I wish had happened at Dikeou. I don’t mean that it is fair to interrupt a poet, mid-reading. An interruption would have ruptured the sense of immobility and powerlessness that flooded me as I sat during what seemed like an interminable subjection of my female body to more male privilege and to which, I repeat, I reluctantly consented. Something I find equally unfair. I actually liked your piece in TitMouse. It was a critique that was smart and effective. It makes me want to read it again and it made me want to perform it. Can I?

A quick word on trauma. I do believe your poetry is about trauma and experiences of violence to some extent. Your gender and sex being particular places of hurt/trauma depending on your definition of the latter word and as such it is centrifugal and a cathexis object. Not just you, all males are hurt through gender and sex, but you also hapen to be a poet, whose work has a certain confessional aspect and while it may not be autobiographical, it still holds the “I”. Such use of the word facilitates the placement of the experiences delineated in the poem and the references to the word “my” personal. To someone, anyone and even the author. It is my impression, and it may be incorrect, that your “I” isn’t about “Sam’s identity”, it is a generic penis porter, “I”. Or let us say that it is about your person, either way the symbolic floats up from the voice of the poet to call attention to one male’s experience of his penis, it reiterates, it demands focus, it will not be purely coincidence or artifice. There are subconscious machinations or at very least implications of phallocentricity, which I have already deemed as sprouting from trauma.

A quick word on race and identification. I am not a multicultural woman and I do not know what it is like to pass for white. Marlon and you are both men of color (Marlon is indigenous to this continent, his people are) who pass for white, on occasion. I want to make something very clear. I didn’t become “brown” the minute I started using the word to refer to myself. I became brown when others said I did. Whether or not I identify as brown, I am still brown. It is irrelevant that any person of any background is or isn’t Caucasian exclusively, if they appear to be so, they have white privilege. Among my own people I am criticized for being “white” (see coconut) because I have assimilated, but white folks have never confused me for white. In other words if you pass for white, then there is privilege that you may be carrying, like with any other structurally granted privilege, without ever having done anything to deserve it.

On another note, I feel flattered by your comment. Thank you. I write for you, after all. I want to say that I never felt hurt by your reading, Sam. I don’t know that anyone actually said the words, “Sam’s reading hurt”. The other thing is that you’re absolutely right, there was plenty more that happened that evening, but I know I learned a lot and felt a lot as a result of your work, not necessarily all enjoyable but that’s what poetry is about. It just sucks that it became such a mess. But we’re poets, we’re janitors, waiters and we can clean a mess up pretty fucking efficiently. So maybe you’ll think about some of the things I said or other people said and maybe you will write me a hateful response and we’ll clean that up too. Or maybe you’ll have coffee with me and finally lend me that recorder you spoke about.

Cheers, poet!

- Bajo.

"Clasp, a hypnosis project" by Danielle Vogel

2011-04-10T21:08:00.001-06:00

"She investigates the reliquary of the book, divinatory & trance poetics, trauma therapies, and incubation narratives."

Excerpt from Danielle Vogel's Clasp, a hypnosis project available at Tarpaulin Sky. Photograph taken by HR Hegnauer, inside of Rebecca Di Domenico's Pellucid cave.

The Efficacy of Tortillas' Performance

2011-04-09T15:17:00.000-06:00

I'm just trying to understand
I've given all I can
but you keep pushing my love over the borderline

Spring Equinox Sestina for Melissa Mack

2011-04-08T09:42:00.000-06:00

by Sirama Bajo

Water sailing the tarnished reach

the dogs off leash, round path

red voracity of space in waiting glass

an armful of stoic violets in May

the garish bent and closed upon

calling an organ

revering it as organ

picking through the pack within reach

colorful as the month of March landing upon

the so called path

we cannot help it so we bend as we may

glass molars, hair and heels, everything glass

no time for measuring such glass

lungs push air through organs

spill the blood of April and look towards May

burdens fold into themselves in order to reach

an open path

through decided words, stones laid upon

and far from upon

the sea cries out in its bits of glass

awarded our own collateral path

distance silences the blue organ

holding out the bend in an attempt to reach

is it May?

yes, it’s already May

all in the contours we feast upon

a language within the firing squad’s reach

why men, not women keep time outside an hourglass

too violent a space for the sound of an organ

you sat out the month, the wake of its path

mourning at the wake of its path

what comes before May

it is just a collateral organ

the opportunities we seize upon

an autobiography framed behind glass

a sequence of steps don’t make a path

cowering path that winds its reach

a glass season ends in May

a month upon the organ’s tremor

April is the Worst Month Ever

2011-04-08T09:37:00.001-06:00

heart stomping Spring
brings me back to Eliot

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

this is how you write a Spring poem

a sestina

this is how once, having written it, you find you have illustrated a painting

Goya. Painting. May 3rd.

Maybe for elves...

2011-03-26T20:29:00.003-06:00

I made this journal last night with some extra looseleaf paper that is the most awful baby blue color and with some left over mailing packaging I had from Serena Chopra sending me the first issue of Tit Mouse. It is my first attempt at an accordion book and I also sewed a cover and made a dust jacket for it. It's extremely inconvenient, as it is quite small for a journal but it's pretty adorable.

from manuscript "Pangs"

2011-03-20T11:16:00.006-06:00

Transcription translation

2011-03-19T22:47:00.000-06:00

I mean to say that the task of a poet is continuous. It is not about working from this hour to such and such hour, one is continually receiving things from the external world and that has to be transmuted. Will eventually be transmuted. This revelation can spring up at any moment. The poet does not rest. The poet is continually working. When dreaming, as well. - Jorge Luis Borges

dialectical poetics: Paradise Now by Brian Ang

2011-03-13T21:52:00.003-06:00

photo by Jeanine Webb

Reading Paradise Now is much like attempting to write a speech for an activist rally after you've drank 6 shots of espresso, minus the nausea. Words zipping by, as if put together by search engines, in long paratactical lists that should never be made, yet here they are: the memorable pairings. Much more so than images born from language's accidental children, these are concepts that disjoint and persuade. In fact, I think I have dreamt these poems, the subconscious enumerating, revisiting a learned language in books of political economy and porn-site comment streams. I've made them, put them together despite better judgement. Paradise Now is a catalogue of languages that do not, on their own, deserve to stand but which together (in his poems) can carry the 21st Century proletariat, drunken Facebook monk into a common language that reflects the isolating conditions in which the individual disintegrates at the end of the day only to be put together again in the digital updates of the morning.

I spoke with Brian Ang in Boulder, CO, as he was participating in Tit Mouse Bay Area Poet Exchange. He was due for a reading at the new Innisfree Bookstore: a darling, poetry book store -the only one of its kind in the city- where I got an almond milk latte (I am non-dairy) and asked him about the process of writing Paradise Now. Ang worked on random text he got from different sources and lifted words off it and built a compiled secondary text in paragraphs. A process that often took all day/night. Then with this secondary text he produced the poems, one after the other, for three months in the late Summer and Fall of 2010. Fueled by the energy of the protest he attended, the work of Kasey Mohammad and by what at this time was some heavy drinking, Paradise Now became a re-signification of the language of political economy, within a self-aware text that is undoubtedly a contemporary to our world, inside which any experiment in vocabulary is possible.

Tiembla el Lucero del Alma- una carta a mi amor

2011-03-07T04:42:00.003-07:00

Querido Derek Fenner,

No es que se me va la vida, es que se me adelgaza el alma y la lluvia me reseca y el sol me da frio. Es el no hallar que hacer con estas manos que no sea tomar en ellas aquel rifle. Se habren un camino en la noche, un camino de rompe monte en la soledad gruesa de la garganta. Siempre ha sido asi el hechizo. El unico bocado de luz lo emite una chispa, una luciernaga al fin del sendero. Es el no saber navegar y encontrarme al azar bajo el viento y "sobre el mar" si no estoy a su lado. Lo vi en un sueño, sin mentirte, corazon. Llegó a mi uniformado, con su belleza sureña, sus botas sobre la piedra y no le pude hablar. A ese padre, hermano. Vino para decirme que hay una montaña que me espera. Amante de la selva. Me doy cuenta que estas manos no saben pelear. Fuera del teclado o de una pluma carecen de vocación guerrillera alguna, ademas se me parte el ser al ver brotar sangre o lagrimas. No sirvo para eso aunque me queme el polvo del continente, aunque me incite la historia y me llame a grito partido la cancion. De mi no sale el canto. Creo en el hombre, dijo y yo lo traduje a algo parecido que dijo Juan Pablo Sartre.

La verdad es que yo tambien tengo fiebre, una de amar la poesía mas que la guerra. Un amor que se alza de estas cenizas, pone a hervir el continente en la misma forma en que lo hace la libertad. Soy maestra, soy educadora y surgo por los aires con alas de libro. Libros inquietos. No es que me voy, mi amor, a un bosque distante, a una lucha descalza contra el hambre como es debido. Es que como petalos de teoría, bebo guitarras y me muero diariamente. Es que en estas tierras late un corazon mas grande que el mio y si me desconcentro, si me dejo distraer, sera lo unico que escuche, y no tendre mas oido para el canto. No me dejes, no te pierdas en mi silencio pero entiende que hay dias. En los que ando el mundo con la lastima de un animal enjaulado que al cerrar los ojos pinta la selva en que nació. Dejame en esa orilla obscura, que ahorita amanece.

En cuerpo,

Sirama Bajo

Post Data: dijiste que te llamara si no podía dormir.

Hoy te Cantamos con Poesia

2011-02-24T10:42:00.001-07:00

photo from Monkey Puzzle Press

Lamentación de la muerte
A Miguel Benítez

Sobre el cielo negro,
culebrinas amarillas.

Vine a este mundo con ojos
y me voy sin ellos.
¡Señor del mayor dolor!
Y luego,
un velón y una manta
en el suelo.

Quise llegar a donde
llegaron los buenos.
¡Y he llegado, Dios mío!...
Pero luego,
un velón y una manta
en el suelo.

Limoncito amarillo,
limonero.
Echad los limoncitos
al viento.
¡Ya lo sabéis!... Porque luego,
luego,
un velón y una manta
en el suelo.

Sobre el cielo negro,
culebrinas amarillas.

-Federico Garcia Lorca

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03 Day

2010-10-11T09:29:00.003-06:00

You dragged infidelity out to the street and beat it. None of this will make a difference, none of the hair pulling. There is something about you that makes me want to carry a switchblade and strawberry flavored lip-gloss. I don’t care if you resent making breakfast in the morning; this relationship is real. Do not bury us. Not unless there is a bottle of Jameson around and plenty of us. What is it about those three colors that make you want to leave me, huh? I’m inconsolable and damn you really are sturdy. Poor mute, statue. You are the subject of poetry and tragedy. I’m so current affairs. Neon made a comeback. So willing to make it work.

Your language used me like a bar napkin, kid. Here I am in the bathroom, all grit. Mascara smudging and impossible. So fragile: my ankles in these shoes. I don’t understand how they don’t just snap. That’s the way your powers work. In the Spring it is the same, those brave little buds breaking through the frost and confusing whether. I’m unstable and the music keeps me lulled, like you body of water. Only men and women here in a basement. Isn’t it funny? We always descend to do our work, as humans. We go internal, all memory in the ground.

-1 Day of Venus

2010-10-07T23:54:00.001-06:00

Me lleno de cosas que decias en un pasado no tan viejo. Ni los paso se hacen largos ya, aunque sean las cuatro de la tarde.

Where is your center, your core? As if the colors blue, orange green, are filling up with light and never good enough to make you real. I’ve sat across from you and eaten. No shards of anything, no slivers of glass or others. If you were to ask me, I would respond, “Always”. I would wear a burgundy dress, smoke a bitter cigar with absolutely no need to. In this particular time and place I would push for our meetings to be discontinued and I’d look up from there, with ungrateful thoughts layered on my tongue.

It is as if the shape of this didn’t matter to you, in the dark or anywhere. You simply can’t remember every possibility. It’s the patent leather that brings it all back. After thinking that I had said it all, you simply stood, sponge-like. You manage to show me the day at its newest. In the exact same way water is only displaced and never harmed. Coral. You stayed though it may seem otherwise. You stayed. You can tell by the way your lipstick sets, by the way your fabrics drape -you are not of this world. Few rules apply in dealings with you. Among these, you are innavigable - that is the hardest to accept.

-3 Day of Venus*

2010-10-04T23:18:00.000-06:00

They say there are fewer things, deeper things and I cannot believe the words. Anything else I hear, only the details of a city. Two lips against each other, not two mouths, a hidden architecture. They say you’re incandescent and mine. Inside my hands… the way you break and still the light pours in, with all the questions. The way I’m mad. You window my chest in irreparable ways, all scenic, all grit.

Two stories meet at the seam and in the shape of the letter v. Nurture and plump terrain. How I expose a roundness, how I dare to feed the world from my own body, yours. How always I write about the land. Come here, listen a while. Irrevocable face, present sliver of stained and marked deeds. I am modern. I am contemporary. I’m abstract and lie here in between.

There are fibers and strings hanging, pulling at my fingertips. The index and thumb, to be exact, while you look in the mirror. As if asteraceae. It is all for you: I’ve made this one confessional. Little planet far. Vinculo perene de las hojas y los astros. Me levanta una palabra, un tal Garcia Lorca, un Dario. Solo. Only to drink you. I spill, like the sand found three days later, on your bed. The sea not wanting to leave you as easily as you did.

Not far from here there is a mariachi singing your birthday. You are the only girl on the strip, the only light in the thick sugary coffee sky. The only nude satin dress with ruffles like dancers, disquieted, uneasy. I can’t remember having honest intentions.

Born of the body, Venus, the floating light of life, fills a certainty. I am so hungry and it has been a while since I slept. It sits on top of the sea, the foam of a thousand men in a circle jerk. My thirst is hanging by tread now. Throw out a net, girl. I’m all scales and fins.

*Venus is in retrograde until the end of November.

entry not about Labor

2010-09-06T11:21:00.002-06:00

The banana peel is still on the windowsill. Every now and then the trees outside my window shake and the leaf shadows paint splatter dark /bright shapes on my face and torso. The next-door neighbor stops macheteing or otherwise striking down the Denver jungle that has overtaken his back yard. I know what I’m talking about. I wondered into it before in a pink silk robe and flip-flops one morning. Completely impenetrable, or at least, unpleasant. Metal clanks and things get chopped and slashed down. Tearing. Like paper. Fibers in trauma, like my sentences.

Dear David Buuck,

I did not have enough time to write a good book, but I wrote a book. Thank you for your encouragement.

Love,

-Bajo

My thought is that the manuscript needs work, but part of the reason I didn’t work on it as much as I now think I ought to have, is because of this rejection that my poems have to be polished and only show the intended rupture. What happened to failure? In the Buuckian sense? What happened to indecency? Femininity lures us into a precise placement of our bodies, as does masculinity for those who ascribe… In the erotic play or the strip tease, we delicately reveal, but what is revealed is strategic. Not accidental, not human and therefore it is a shape assumed. What is more interesting to me is/are the default gestures. I can always go back to the text and chop down, hack branches mercilessly, then assume triumph as a shape.

the Day on my face

2010-09-02T21:50:00.000-06:00

I notice it. Every night as soon as I walk into my bedroom. My dear roommate is in his, typing judiciously and willfully to make his wages. Stepping through the doorway into my unpretentious and pleasant apartment, setting the bags down... there!

The trenches now carved beneath my eyes are saying something. Maybe they are saying, "sleep". I only wish I had a good book like "Lady Chatterly's Lover" to snuggle up against. I also wish my difficult eyelids were not demanding my full attention at the moment.

Buenas noches!

Septiembre

2010-09-01T08:04:00.003-06:00

Well, did not write on the blog in August at all. I have since moved to Denver and also have started a new job.

I also had the privilege to go to Oakland for the 95cent skool. Something I am still processing and entirely pleased to take my time doing so. I have also written a book. Now to see if it will get published... I can never simply "end" the editing process. I have made a dozen drafts of the book (I polish and re-polish according to MNP).

Danielle Vogel and HR came over for dinner and they are absolutely lovely. They brought a salad made entirely of herbs and edible flowers from their garden, with little cherry tomatoes. We talked about a lot of things including cold readings and apparently a very accurate reading I gave Danielle one evening at Selah's house. I don't normally do psychic activity for people -that I know of- so this was a surprise. I was also quite tipsy when it happened. This was sometime last year.

I visited a trendy yarn shop where I paid too much for a skein. The lovely lady tending to the store tried to convince me of my knitting being constricting and suggested I enter the world of knitting without patterns. I tried, in vain, to convince her that I found pattern-less knitting to be a mathematical headache but she still "taught" me how to do it anyway. Why are people like that? Best of intentions but unnecessary. It's like eager born again Christians. As if listening to the way "he" saves will really stop me from worshiping effigies or my naked body?!

Hugely personal and unliterary entry. Sorry. Have a fantastic September!

-Bajo

June + July = 95 Cent Skooler

2010-06-03T14:48:00.000-06:00

image hosted @ http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/sf/3-14-oakland2.jpg

Hello you loyal reader. Yes, you, hot stuff. I will be blogging at a different blogspot for the months of June and July. Really love to read your comments there. It's a blog for the 95 Cent Skool Seminar happening this Summer in Oakland, CA. The blog is communal, so I will hopefully be blogging with all kinds of brilliant people/poets.

Check us out:

http://95centskooler.blogspot.com

La Bajo will be back in August.

Saturday.

2010-05-29T12:49:00.000-06:00

Today I am crestfallen. Today I found out that Leslie Scalapino died. Today I found out that I will not be going to Oakland for the seminar. My ride out there decided to withdraw from our plans and with said withdrawal tears flooded me. Shall I always live in the periphery of contemporary poetry? I, the uneducated poet. I the little working class poet. I'm doing my damnest to enter into the discussion, but it doesn't work. Not today. Today I have to make money and write articles to eat and I cannot. A part of me says "See, it wins. Capitalism always wins." Today it has. Today it takes the crown. Today I realized I must defer and go get a real job. Something real.

photo from University of Chicago website

Dearest Leslie,

I will need your help. Lead me to your books. You are loved.

Sirama Bajo

Akpo-Sani stolen artifact

2010-05-28T16:51:00.000-06:00

I asked Olatundji Akpo-Sani a few questions about lines, water, narrative. Inspired by Cecilia Vicuña, of course. I leave you only with the answers. What are the questions?

"1. A connection of points, a participatory gesture, a "come on" meant to connect two disparate ideals

2. It is a bonding agent a series of connections more than a creation of line as in constructed from or separate than water is a line pointing in one direction. The story of pebbles that were once Boulders The complexities of salted versus fresh ebb and flow with every wax and wane

3. To measure a link between instants and yet somehow have it create its own instant in the moment between destruction and creation

4. Quite simply put - a line - connecting the heartbreak of the humanity of parents and family and the moment just before we met. Two points connected with various river created canyons.

5. Path is an interpretation of memory and imagination. One or another or another winding illusion. The correct sequence reordered or escaped, but never new or truly unique."

Everything is Happening Today

2010-05-22T12:05:00.001-06:00

a scarf held hostage

a group of people playing drums

a pedicure

a bathing suit

muffins, banana chocolate chip

a postcard, two

Wish List

2010-04-27T15:16:00.001-06:00

Recyclopedia

Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge

by Harryette Mullen

Graywolf Press, 2006

Art and Productivity

2010-04-26T20:15:00.000-06:00

Harryette Mullen isn't sure of what she will be doing with her next project. She's not sure whether it will be a book of poems or a biography.

There is a cricket outside, I think. Little bell of an insect.

Back to Mullen. She has worked on and researched about her family history quite a bit. Still there is no specific purpose other than the research. Maybe there is the flirtation with a possible project, but she's not concerned, I don't think, about what will "come" of it. This, I won't lie, makes me uncomfortable. Part of my concern sounds like this, "What's the point of it, then?" or "How can she waste her time that way?". Waste. Her time. Valuable time.

My twitter account just texted me, again.

Since when is a Black woman researching her ancestry in this country a waste of time? Since when is it something that needs to look "productive"? Isn't it enough to know that she is disrupting the narrative of silence, of lost memory, of a story buried? This idea that there has to be a purpose to what she is doing is a very middle-class concern. It is enough that her project is about the project itself. The interesting, exciting and heartbreaking things she has come across during her research suffice. They do not need to exist for a utile purpose. Who said artist have to be producing with every step they take? Who says that books and art-ifacts are the only useable things that an artist can produce? What is production anyway?

Shutters piled up in an alley next to recycle and garbage cans. Bring them home. Tumbleweed in alley rescued as well. Now on love seat. Things discarded. Not thought "utile" anymore. The shutters will hold beloved correspondences. Tumbleweed makes great light accessory.

rePoste en español

2010-03-25T11:59:00.000-06:00

No se si ésta escritura es de alguna manera interesante, o conmoviente, o importante. No tengo la certeza de que sea algo mas que una cosa superflua. En el sentido mayor es importante hacer arte que interroga y empuja mis presuposiciones. En ese sentido es útil escribir “lo estraño”. Porque “lo estraño” hace que la escritura tenga una situación política. Si la escritura tiene tal colocacion, se habre el espacio para la contestación de las presuposiciones más grandes: las que ya habia antes de mi llegada, por ejemplo. Lo que no he podido arreglar es la pregunta del arte-facto. La importancia de mi trabajo en mi vida versus la importancia que el trabajo pueda o no pueda tener en la comunidad humana. No “lo estraño” de mi poesía no tiene justificacion pero aun siento que si la tuviera, le daria mas sentido a una escritura tan incomoda. La escritura me pone incomoda. No es facil leerla, no engancha emocionalmente. Esta rota, o fracturada… el escrito da la sensacion de una lengua que se intenta deshacer, ir “esbaratao” o “descachimbado”. ¿Cuan interesante podria ser? En realida no pienso que lo sea… tengo que escribir asi. Si yo intento, no, cuando yo intento escribir de alguna otra manera, el escrito pierde un poco su integridad. Como dice David Buuck, usando un concepto redefinido: el escrito “fracasa”. Y por otro lado tambien fracaso si escribo los remates, desunidos que son mis textos poeticos. ¿Que es la cuestion?

on Latin@ and being

2010-03-24T10:00:00.002-06:00

photo by Roger Wendell

Once I was speaking to a co-worker at the old Boulder co-op in the dairy isle. A guy shopping whispered "Speak English!" under his breath. We were speaking in Spanish.

A transgressor can be, a trespasser, can become, in the many senses of life. The sky has no wired fence and the tunnels are only made of air. I did not cross the line, not then. Not quite. The translated body plays on the Spanish word for placement, not language. It has many productions.

There is no being at home in this body, not in this or any country. Perhaps in the sky, in full flight, unable to sleep due to motion sickness, yes, perhaps I can. There is no being “at home” with my self.

The language applied to myself, to me, prevents me from becoming, outside of it. I become Latin, like a gesture, or become undone, not knowing myself, always as other. Latinism hails my identity but inside a stereotyped space. It accumulates narratives and it confuses the reader, mainly me. Imbued now with hyper-savagism and hyper-sexualized, rage and “crazyness” I am more Latina than I can ever be.

I cannot be it, it’s impossible, a fiction. I fail. I fail to act with such gestures, to do a good-enough job of it. Not only do I become less, being less (or too much depending) I am left with a presupposition that no other can really ever mirror. No one can find the perfect degree of Latin, simply because it is performance. I am isolated within this “naming”, this “hailing” falling short of the proper expression of my “self” as other, as a me and isolate others for the same reason; other Latinos for what they fail to signify.

Any configuration of the term fails, except this is not understood. It is thought that this identifying of ethnicity has meaning, but frankly it is in construction, not finalized. Always newly formed, reconfigured.

95 Cent Skool, this summer

2010-03-23T15:24:00.000-06:00

What is it?

The 95 Cent Skool is a 6 day long experimental seminar that will be offered in Oakland, California, July 26-31, 2010. It is convened by Joshua Clover and Juliana Spahr. It will explore the possibilities of poetry writing as part of a larger social practice, at a distance from the economic and professional expectations of institutions. We believe a dozen people sitting around a table can’t ruin poetry, but that costs, professional context, mythologies of individual genius, and client/service-based models can — and in our own experiences teaching in pay-to-play writing programs, often do.

Our concerns in these six days begin with the assumption that poetry has a role to play in the larger political and intellectual sphere of contemporary culture, and that any poetry which subtracts itself from such engagements is no longer of interest. “Social poetics” is not a settled category, and does not necessarily refer to poetry espousing a social vision. It simply assumes that the basis of poetry is not personal expression or the truth of any given individual, but shared social struggle.

Spring is here and Summer too

2010-03-22T07:12:00.000-06:00

No matter what I am thinking about, I am mostly thinking about Oakland…
It is a rumor, a slapping of language. The avenues are silent and I can walk and think about writing. I can do so while holding a string, like DB, to get a measure of walking, or better yet, a measure of thinking about narrative. That is what a story is. I make hats out of stories counting each letter and knowing that each stitch is a folding of my tongue.
I can’t decide the scent of it, of Oakland. Like when I just wake up, my brain isn’t ready for the senses yet. Spring as the start of something new brings desire to life. I want you like Mars out of retrograde. Oh city, oh East Bay. I will come to you and knit a color of summer.

"somewhere I have never travelled gladly..."

I’ve grown accustomed to working my tongue into unnatural shapes. I’ve got speaking anxiety. No accent is “normal” anymore. I wait for those moments after drinking when anything comes out. It sounds inevitably like Spring. Such a season is obscene in this state. It can’t make up its mind. I vacillate from one feeling to the next, from a language to the other. God, I need to start writing letters

Jaques

2010-03-20T16:14:00.002-06:00

Skin magazines are nothing new, only titles. Like O, once kept under your pajamas, bed, bookshelves of today's artists. Skin has since evolved. Slick and shiny popcorn washes it all away, comparably.

Psychologists maintain that people tend to go back to bases during depression, but they still love sex a lot. Which would explain the increased popularity of supposedly untouched natural pulp of erotic harkening back to the classic man in the book. Oh well, pin-ups and centerfolds. Even their women pictured blur the line between pornography and art. Will you now get coffee with me? I’m the same girl you saw last Thursday. I have a story, which ultimately makes me start loving the skin I’m in.

Thinking about...

2010-03-17T11:12:00.001-06:00

I am thinking about the following:

-the body as a site of instrumentality

-meaning as a structure of authority in regards to experimental writing

-accessibility, physical presence and racism, or the apparition of brown bodies

-ecology and ethics or ecology vs. ethics

-yarn and language; text and textile

And perhaps I will have a book soon...

Regarding Last Post

2010-02-26T17:16:00.001-07:00

I don't know if this is in any way interesting, or compelling or important? I'm not sure it's anything but superfluous? In a larger sense it is important to make art and push back on my presuppositions. In that sense it is useful to write "the strange". It makes the writing have a political situation. If the writing has such a placement, then there is contestation to the larger presuppositions: the ones made before I got here and so on. What I haven't sorted out is the question of art-ifact. The importance my work in my life vs. the importance the work may or may not have in the human community. I have no justifications for the "strangeness" of my poetry but still feel that if I did have one, I might be able to make sense out of such uncomfortable writing. The writing makes me uncomfortable. It isn't easy to read, it isn't emotionally engaging. It is broken, or breaking... it feels as though the language is trying to come undone. How interesting could that possibly be? I really don't think it is... except I have to write like this. If I try . . . no, when I try to write in any other way, it feels a little dishonest and to use a concept re-defined by David Buuck. "I fail". Then again, "I fail" if I write the nutty disjointed poetic xperiment art text. What's the deal?

Deterritorialization

2010-02-25T12:23:00.001-07:00

One can write using languages, one for North and one for South. Using organic shapes or angles, one can draw a line. A wall may or may not be a decent delineation, but you can use fencing material. The exchange rate between the two spaces can be multiplied by the amount of idioms used and the total amount of military equipment can stand in for this number. Use a piece of paper to locate the quotient, behind bars, half-naked and repeat. You may use this for the North but when I did, I had to try different things.

To locate an idiom inside you must look behind the eyes but you run the risk of mistaking it for slander; just make the necessary adjustments and tough decisions. Gestures will be your biggest distraction. Only then will you be able to map the inherited grammar to be able to switch for long periods of time. Once you have the words and the minimum wage expectancy of the average, you have the right coordinates and full access to the resources. At this time you can choose to cook at home or get take-out. One can write organic shapes and decent delineation between the two spaces. The total amounts to a piece of paper. You many use this for locating an idiom but you run the risk of mistaking it for a though decision. You will be able to map periods of time and the expectancy of resources.

Outside using languages or angles, you can use military equipment to locate the North inside. You slander gestures inherited once you have the average words. It’s never that simple, is it? You have the right, at this time to choose one for the North and you can draw a line multiplied by the amount you can stand. Behind bars I look for the eyes necessary for distraction. To be able to switch the minimum wage that coordinate with cooking at home, I am using idioms. A number may or may not be used but you can use a half-naked number and repeat. You run into different things when you see the adjustment made for long and full access. You can get taken, just get the grammar words and remember to choose to multiply.

Excercise in BKs from DB

2010-02-24T01:35:00.004-07:00

Eso me hace pensar en el genero. No me puedo esperar, para levantar. Una pared cubierta con graffiti, pintura. Mi cuerpo es un paisaje ambulante. Tierra entrecortada. Que haces que me piesas? El tiempo se deslizó sobre el hielo que vuelve a tu casa desde su lugar dentro de las tres de la mañada. Entonces me transformé en un ser maravilloso. Recuerdo pensar. Donde esta el hogar? El caballo de la palabra. Recuerdo la nostalgia, la pelicula de Tarkovsky. Recuerdo ese nudo en la garganta que hace el tragar saliva tan imposiblemente obvio. Mi cuerpo esta lleno de sangre.

The Strand Dreaming

2010-02-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

David Buuck likes yarn. He thinks it is a good material with which to measure time and lines. Lines can mark or they can build a poem. A sentence. Cumulative sentences. "I remeber" sentences.

On my ancestral altar that houses Guadalupe, Elekes, Santa Rita de Cassia, I also have spinning yarn from Cecilia Vicuña. She said it was intended to be memory, the color of menses. Scorpio maroon. I connect with her as an indigenous inheritor, as a writer, as a person that bleeds dead blood belonging to that side of the Rio Grande. See Bhanu Kapil and Amy Catanzano's face at Naropa University, also Dodie Bellamy.

This is a translation and mis-transcription of Cecilia Vicuña's documentary performance peace in Caleu, Chile.

Caleu means Mapuche transforming. Is dreaming on the side of the sleeper and the very children know the meaning. A workshop of their own remembering, remembered. Arriving without them knowing explanations without the strand. That has the memory and the feeling of returning to that town of Caleu.

- Bajo

An evening with David Buuck

2010-02-22T23:41:00.006-07:00

Only him could really ever convey him. Teal, I think, is the color of his eyes. This man is sharp, smiting and his favorite colors are pink and brown. Thinking about knitting and the Bay Area more and more. I am not satisfied with my options. With a map that I face.

David offers tours of San Francisco and he cuts a length of string (or rope) to then build a circle or a frame within which to set a sight and begin to map the contents within that frame.

What is left out?

What is singled out?

What kind of narrative is created from this difference?

What is the heat?

What makes you wet?

Jameson smells like caramel love and rose petals are edged in red. This is the way our sentences go paragraph and leave their spouses for someone else. This is the way dogs look before they are yours, before you know you belong to them for a few summer weeks. This is the way a writer meets another. In which philosophical proposal? In which architectural landscape of language? This makes me think of...? I want to do _____________ with my body.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T13:56:00.001-07:00

I am looking at the Earth with my own words. From a balcony I have not yet been on, arm linked with my lover's. It is Valentine’s Day and I’m writing Love down. In the Lacanian sense, which is the post-Freudian, Daddy-smelled-like-rum-and-he-missed-my-birthdays, I can make up words ‘cause ammapoet sense.

And that is my real lover. Barthes, Neruda, West, Cummings, Garcia Marquez, Delany. That is he. Not my type at all. That he is there: a decision, it doesn’t matter which until it does, until it is this particular decision, with this kind of hair, in particular, and this way of walking. This way, specific way, of laughing and bickering that informs us. Human.

I spent a portion of yesterday with AB, a beautiful person, younger than myself, discussing love. I threw some thoughts in, as one does in conversation, if one is opinionated, which I happen to be. She did the same. We didn’t agree on everything and that is a relief. I hate to be agreed with by my peers in a discussion. I feel as though I have failed to ask the right questions. She did not fail. “You think you got it?” she said, “What love is all about?” Direct, frightening, daunting, even. “It’s going to sound weird, but I think so, I think it’s a construct. Not the warm feeling you get when you look at your mother or your really good friend, or your partner. The thing that is a fantasy is that in-love feeling. It’s totally irrational and I’m too rational a person to be pulled in by it," I said.

I have been, many times, pulled in.

“I can agree with you, rationally,” she said “but I still loose myself in it”.

Maybe I will be lost in it again someday. Maybe I will stop looking for my Father where he was not, where he will never be: in my past. Briar Rose will wake-up on her own, she may be old when she does, but what's matters is that she do it. That she wake herself up.

Happy Valentine's Day!

michelle naka pierce : no use in a centre: Pedagogy of Decentered Authority in the Blogosphere

2010-02-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

michelle naka pierce : no use in a centre: Pedagogy of Decentered Authority in the Blogosphere

music=love or pre-Valentine's Day 3

2010-02-13T06:30:00.001-07:00

pre-Valentines' Day 2

2010-02-12T17:40:00.001-07:00

"Details refer to other details like signs refer to other signs. Equal or otherwise. The language of action-say the signified of heart-speaks loudly to our visual decoders."

from Beloved Integer by Michelle Naka Pierce

pre-Valentines' Day

2010-02-11T13:29:00.010-07:00

Dear pre-Valentine,

I like the way you chew your crackers, in the morning, with the venetian blinds pulled back like sleep. If I knew of it in a pragmatic way, as I know the snow, then we would be a cabin weekend. When I say to you that you remember, every day with your eccentric smile, and the squares of the winter in the gazing, I mean you do. Thus, they are the distances, all but one greedy rage, that are the wardrobes open to the cold, the laziness. Here it is, that self dreaming about you and for fear of being told not to speak of you, I have given you another name. Like before Valentine.

My dear little pre-Valentine. This is to say I like your clothes strewn all over the floor along with the dust bunnies. I'm not convinced that this is a wonderful place but I still listen to the music and write it down. You came into a dream last night. You were jogging and breathing your five o'clock shadow in my face and you smelled like the gym of my adolescence. The way you keep those memories for me: you're so contagious. I have plenty of nails now, you needn't worry. I've got substance and a greyness you can slice, but nothing resembles your mouth. A swampy briar of delirium. If you don't like me, don't read me, I say. My mind is a boy that sings somewhat like Dylan injecting himself with a Maine summer, all February long.

If I were to put it another way, pre-Valentine, and I have not convinced you still, sip your coffee and go out into the darkness of these months. I am an ordinary fish, like you. Now, get me a drink.

Eagerly,

-la Bajo.

at Coffeehouse

2010-02-04T21:12:00.006-07:00

Not reading, but writing, again.

I am writing in the grip of a feeling, something like a long White man standing there. Or like a Brown boy’s rage whose tongue laps up the remaining gossip. I am here. I might be Maria, but less virginal. I might be her, with the language rolling into a one, two, four.

What is smoke, anyway, and for how long?

I’ve been invited to tea. I've been remade. A trek I can’t make out and can’t ask her to make; pilgrimage-like.

What is wrong with my language these days? Is it really that surreal?

I cannot drive. Don't know how. The ocean doesn’t make me nauseate. I don’t like the way I am writing. Risky moves of outsiders. A barista talks and although I have no time, technically speaking, I sip Earl Grey.

What is it about the word stoicism?

It’s hard for me to find the romance, not that I ever have, but I’ve been looking…

I no longer love like I used to, or believe. I have a CD to deliver and songs to dance to with a young man. A person, but little. There are songs about love on that CD and I wonder, is this a wrong choice? Should it help to build the blinding narrative? I will be there to offer up difference, to deconstruct.

God, has the modernism finally left me?

from D.V.

2010-02-01T15:51:00.002-07:00

bajo...

i dreamed of you last night. we were living a hundred years ago in brooklyn. you lived in a brownstone across the street from me and we would sit at our windows, look at one another and have conversations telepathically. we would also travel in this way: vibrationally. we traveled together hundreds and hundreds of years into the past and you spoke to me in spanish and i understood everything you said. there was the color green and red. and there was soil and clay. the dream is so grainy now since i woke up. i wish i could remember what we had been talking about. you only whispered.

xox

Dark Warrior

2010-01-31T02:00:00.005-07:00

Dear D,

It’s never been more appropriate than now. I don’t know what it is about me, or you, that is so confusing. We link words, perhaps syntax. Like just as you turn to watch the Hop arrive, I turn the corner.

D, do not come near me. I’m not like you, like any of you. Do you understand? We don’t look at each other from now on, you hear? Finish your beer. Your game of poker or finish whatever is full of you. Whatever is with you. I’m not quite sure about that. Letters: but I want to understand. I want to know, D. Fully. A rendezvous in the snow. In slippers that belong to somebody else. It is the first time I want to and cannot. Let me be totally honest.

A part of me seeks to be transparent. Not of skin, of course, of scent either. Only from and towards the taste. The sea of last time, remember? You tasted it and I did too, by accident. Drank it in, I couldn’t refuse. Dearest D, this is the so-called stance. See “Caridad”.

PS. Sometime ago I found you and now I don’t.

I haven’t written until now because I did not know what to call you. Except tonight. I heard it in the car lights against the drizzle. Somewhere in the world there is a sound. The sound is used as the name for something and it can be used to call a soft, cool blowing and the same word, elsewhere, means a slight rain. Nicaraguan/Puertorican. Today I can call you by your name: abyss.

Forgive me for having left things not built. In progress, under construction, mid air. No flowery words, no structures, just grit and foundation, plans, blueprints, intention, wait. I want to know you, but not like before. Not adjacent. To meet you on the surface, as an outline, or what we can’t enter nor become. Use me as your last resort.

Urgently,

-Bajo

Lacanism

2010-01-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

"What one loves in a being is beyond what she is. It is, in the end, what she lacks."

Strangest Radiohead Video

2009-12-28T04:33:00.001-07:00

This is amazing

Wong Kar Wai directs My Blueberry Nights. These kids in Spain put a scene from the film to Radiohead music, "Lurgee" to be more specific, from their album Pablo Honey and then translated the song and put the subtitled lyrics on it.

Amazing.

Cut-up in Chinese post

2009-12-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

Somebody accidentally, presumably commented with code written in Chinese. This is the cut-up after Babelfish took care of it.

the female adult percentage pastes hundreds
the chart of free movie with chatroom
the adult Nick to watch 108 does not have code

On the alley silk
stayed-cable bridge autodyne
of dew point
ripe woman or exclusive agency on-line
not to have the code person wife
ripe female autodyne
animal sexual intercourse
to younger sister to rape 3p to exchange wives
ripe female makes friends at the Hong master
pornography website autodyne
wardrobe malfunction toss is like steel pipe
steel pipe Xiu hinet net
sexual affection 85cc the street
cinema city
a chart pasting big milk

Younger sister lovable compassion picture
Comrade, to make friends, net free, sensation novel a piece of dvd sex in sex 666 to paste the chart area
element of person kingdom
human spirit female
superior fervor not to have the code
yes 777 Europe and America to paste the chart
wii777 game backup to stand
on lion travel elements the National People's Congress complete works
toot toot cinema city appeal thing on-line net overseas to import appeal commodity
spicy younger sister uncanny prediction

Wardrobe malfunction
movie naked colored
drawing on pottery bikini motorcade
naked games nameless
younger sister wall the adult male comrade
forum to look at the younger sister precious portrait daily straight

-Bajo

Magic!

Stocking Wish

2009-12-20T20:54:00.000-07:00

I hope I get a copy of "In Cold Blood" for Christmas, Yule or whatever.

Sweet Home

2009-12-19T01:42:00.003-07:00

Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick them out. Morrison, Beloved.

Sethe and memory of place.
Sethe and displacement.

Moses and the waters, the narratives of currents, of emptying. Katrina and then I remember.

Wetback. Remember. FOB.

That I should. Should definitely bring my________ to prove my ________ to ____________ in this country.

Morrison’s 3rd world narrative (and feminists, post-structuralist people of color forgive the term) invades every thought I have about place. From Pecola’s junkyard to Baby Shugg’s clearing.

I am on the inside, standing out. Standing between and must remember. To send the _________ form to __________ every time I change residence.

A deportable offense is any translation involving a crime of choral turpitude.

Any valiant convicted of a crime within (10) or (5) fears of residence for a maximum of up to a year is deemed deportable.

An alien will be reported at time of convenience, nerving sentence or upon review of eagle status. Alien conflicted will not qualify for citizenship, retirement or marriage to an American citizen.

Deportation is an American death. Immigration is the way we stay alive, on the wall, against it, body shoved against it.

“What does that mean?”
“It means you can’t so much as jaywalk or you’re out of here”.

EL RIO GRANDE

This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Says Morrison at the end of The Bluest Eye. Still searching for the I that could speak about a “there” that’s more a “here”, than…

And do all rivers flow to the ocean?

Interspersed with Theory and V

2009-11-15T09:13:00.003-07:00

How do we enter a discourse that escapes us? How do we look within it? How do we make gestures or take shapes? Perch? To write now not for you but only for you. To write, perhaps to force oneself to write?

Boulder is covered in snow. The snow that is not beautiful large fluff, but thin powdery snowman stuff. I think about how unlikely it is for a girl and a boy. Think of popsicles. It is true that you make art, but where? It is true that I am trapped in a silo, inside the bubble. I don't want to wear the engagement ring and I don't like it when my professors go on sabbatical: Pierce, Taylor.

I force myself to write in the shadow. Or morning. This is probably the correct way to consume you.

Barthes said in Pleasure of the Text (and I paraphrase) that any text is boring unless it is full of desire and neurosis. I am entertaining as a text.

Lacan said, God-knows-where, that (and I paraphrase wildly) to be in-love with someone is to attempt to give them a void to fill, which they have no interest in seeing, much less filling. Every time I have claimed to "be" in-love, that is exactly what it felt like.

So, do we read and write one another? All of my distractions are awake and the text is unresponsive. The text blinks and changes channels for my viewing pleasure. She will, no doubt, force me to watch the film-to let the ink dry-to exhibit a sheen.

You are that installation I can't see from outside the gallery and before I get the chance to see it, will be taken down. All that is left is a video on the internet, reminding me of what is possible between text and author. Or artist or Author? Or, ....

Comment on FB to Rebecca Caridad

2009-10-21T19:08:00.001-06:00

If one is an other, and by other we mean, bordered or border crosser. What is one's home, where does one live. Where is home situated. In language, nowhere, or here, or right now. If I call you because I will be homeless do you say? Yes? If language does not permit one to have a home (a Here) then that is where No. Where. Where is one's life situated if not here. Then it is there. There is where one, she, her life is situated. But not here. Not alive and not in life, but outside of language and self.

bajoycaridad.blogspot.com

New Work?

2009-10-02T14:37:00.000-06:00

I was not actually having a talk with Joe Cooper about murderers. It seems that we were both working on similar texts, or at least related. I was exhibiting what Jung called introverted tendencies in artistic process and he, take a guess? Extraverted, which according to the same shrink is the transcendental key to a work. It is more relational to the collective. If that makes any sense? Well I have decided to abandon my thoughts about the necrophiliac, after I couldn't sleep thinking about corpses. It seems that this text has much psychological impact: I do not feel like I can write this at the moment. Instead I have chosen to go the left handed extraverted path. I suppose hunger is setting in... hello cannibal!

Pound (part 1)

2009-09-28T17:02:00.003-06:00

A language charged with meaning, as opposed to not charged with meaning. I’ve never actually encountered such a language, with the negative charge, that is. In oversimplified terms, Chip says, Literature as a concept is invented. I want to know more. Pound confuses me; it is his tone. That tone of Pound’s whom Eleni Sikelianos once referred to as, and I paraphrase, fabulously grouchy. I see nothing fabulous about him, more pedantic and bathed with classism, really. Why should we follow in the steps of most of our teachers and worship the man? I suppose it’s because no matter what personal feelings you have toward or against Ezra Pound, he makes some interesting points. His ostentatious remarks make him candid. I appreciate candidness. Perhaps in reading him again I realize just what a wide-eyed Naropa student I was four years ago; how thirsty, how starved for some, for any theory. Ready to listen to anyone who had an opinion about poetry. That was before the slaps in the face and heartache and the internalized racism did me in. Ah, I think of Toni Morrison. I paraphrase, a certain kind of flower cannot grow in such a soil; it will perish.

When pound says, “Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportioned to their ability AS WRITERS” I am lost, again. What is a definite social function? Is this weighed against the writer’s social value or ability to leave a mark upon the skin of the social body? How? How is the writer’s ability established, how do we investigate the relationship between her ability and her undermined potential? How do we wager against the lack of access to the resources that could allow for a more just assessment of her social function? How is this determined and who determines the proportions?

I am not historical. I have left many articles behind along with pronouns and call to Strunk and White as I do St. Claire or Our Holy Mother of Conception. On my knees for the proper use of a semi/colon. While you are away I’m huddled, or pounced upon whatever I can glean off of hesitant professors or the SWP. Tired, torrid, buried in a book. Pink highlighter in hand: this is confessional. This is feminism, 3rd world, post-colonial critique. You want an education? Fucking, then, come and get it. Pound says of the decline of a nation’s literature, “the nation atrophies and decays”. Is this the calm before the storm? I can only pray that Marx is right. I will light a candle. The legitimate child of the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution: Jesus in the marketplace. But what exactly does he mean by the “fogged language of swindling classes”? If a nation’s literature (as ours) is truly in decline, then bring in the doctor. I hate to bring in a materialist point of view when I know nothing about the subject, but this seems to be around the corner. So when it does shrivel and shrink, we’ll have a Working Class atrophied in some sense, but with a ready biceps to be flexed against those who keep us from the academies and universities. The new literatures is a literature of the streets in which commitment and NOT Daddy’s resources, and not Mommy’s DNA, hails us into our true social functions, what those are, shall be determined by the people of the future. In the meantime, a literature is dying: cheers!

Despues de Hejinian

2009-09-11T16:54:00.003-06:00

¿Y entonces, quien habla? En caso de la poética-experimento de bELLAca, habla primeramente el patriarcado. ¿Y cuando no? A través de la objetificacion del cuerpo femenino y del genero asignado: mujer. Un error. La violencia en forma de agresión sexual, violación poética y psíquica de la sujeto-objeto en el contenido de la música popular que igualmente celebra y castiga la sexualidad abierta de la mujer, la tiñe de un salvajismo hyper-sexual, de una narrativa colonial internalizada. La mujer como continente indomable y conquistable. Es claro, la narrativa ofende y a la misma vez, mi generación repudia los versos pornográficos y detalladamente obscenos al igual que no les aparta la vista. Es dicho, no podemos huirle, lo intentamos, esta en todas partes. Negar las líricas de este fenómeno, es darle la espalda a la generación en que formamos parte, es aislarnos, negar los vínculos y es mentirnos. Este fenómeno es importante no porque sea cierto, si no por lo presente, lo incesante de la industria y sus mensajes. Que quede claro, no estoy proponiendo un zambullo en esta subcultura, y tampoco mínima participación en esta. No es tan difícil descifrar las narrativas y las opresiones que ahí operan. Me considero una feminista y mujerista, okay, como tu quieras. Pero abandonar a mis contemporáneos, excomulgar a los participantes, juzgar y rechazar a los otros miembros de mis tiempos es un suicido emocional en el que invierto absolutamente nada. Lo que puedo hacer es observar, y protestar solo hasta el punto en que me deje el leguaje. Cualquier violencia, hacia una persona, hacia un grupo, proviene de la enajenación de los agresores ante sus victimas. Como mujer, no me doy el lujo de ignorar esta explotación, pero tampoco abandono a mis queridos cacos, jóvenes, compañeros Boricuas en la confusión y la inseguridad sobre lo que nos aguarda el futuro. El reggeaton nos miente, pero en su ficción no es peor que la academia, el mito del capitalismo o la religión. Si es crudo, es de mal gusto, pero por lo meno nos ofrece un reto, una plataforma real para la critica y nicho fértil en el que se puede conducir el experimento del lenguaje. ¡Suéltate!

Rolando y Los Guanabanas

2009-09-07T19:43:00.001-06:00

El lenguaje es otro, la emocion sata. Ven, a una actividad discretamente. Digo, yo fui el primero. Alimentalo. Lenguaje, yo te lo mimo. Hazme durar, duro mas que todo el resto. Esta en la practica este coitus. Dezplazate, sigue la relacion para el otro. Paso a él, y elaboro. Vamos. Sé sucia de palabrería inversa. Echate el que tiene por objeto, alocucion. Es una piel, mas nada, y esto lo sabes. Sabes que yo soy actividad discursiva. Indirectamente ven y bellaqueame. Un doble contacto, dale. Envuelvete: un significado unico “yo te deseo”. Y lo vamos (vamos a hacerlo) por otra parte, así mismo. Al que te someto, amorosamente, sin orgasmo. ¡Ay amor, temblequea! Yo froto mi lengua. !Lucete! Viene, como el unico y te libera. Ella lo hace estallar por otra parte, tirada en la cama. La relacion que yo te he hecho desvivir. Sin una forma literaria, Confiado que le guste guayarla. Una filosofía de las cosas, esa morena es proposito. Implica lamer fatalmente un abstracto sobre el amor, bañada en crema.

I will be gone

2009-08-25T23:55:00.002-06:00

and will be singing this song

FREEDOM

2009-08-25T22:09:00.002-06:00

Jail bird. This is not a joke, this is an oracle. This means scrubbing the temple floor. My father was told in code that I was a girl, over the radio. This is how one says "Guerrilla Fighter" or "immigrant" or "monster". Thelonious plays the keyboard and asks me if I really think he's like Picasso.

Dear Jail bird,

I am going away now, single file. No one will notice. Monday, no job. Tuesday no home. How are we to make this happen, Lou? When does it happen for us? When does racism tire, where is there no poverty? My mind is a Modernist epic.

I'm terrified. There's nothing here anymore, all has fallen apart and I'm writing, but why? When I was little I thought that my letters would be so compelling that someone was bound to come get me the fuck out of there. No one, not yet. I'm still writing.

Dear Jail bird,

This is to say that I've tried everything including death. Nothing else will do. But also, why do you say that I should keep writing?

Dear Jail bird,

What is a buddha and why do they make Universities that asphyxiate? How come I used to be able to fall in-love? And is 2012 for real? Do I die at the end, or in the middle?

In the 80's people went to jail for political reasons. Jail bird, my tail's between my legs and I don't even care. Or am I a good person? Why did Lorca write? Have you ever seen a shit-poor woman poet? I've heard of one, she now has her own line of greeting cards. Jail bird, is that sexy?

When I get out, Jail bird, I'm gonna live. I will know the difference. No man or woman should ever have their freedom ripped from them, and any man that attempts to do so is only a coward. I will always have my freedom and don't need to meditate 3 hours a day. Jail bird, when you get out, you're gonna be unstoppable. Do you promise?

LIST OF THINGS TO DO ON THE OUTSIDE:

1. Travel through Latin America and read "The Open Veins..."
2. See New York, again
3. See Paris, for the first time
4. Learn to play my button box
5. See Cuba, maybe move
6. Go to school and graduate at last
7. Give my mother a kiss
8. Witness a birth
9. Meet the Guarani
10. Fix my cavities
11. Call Fatu
12. Learn to drive without getting sick
13. Give up sugar
14. Risk it all for the poems and I mean all.

The Working Class Poets Alliance

2009-07-21T02:35:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I fantasize. Specially when I get off work at 1:15 am and find a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket from the night’s tips and decide that I cannot take another pain-stabbing step. My heels feel as if bare feet were hitting sharp glass and there is a buzzing numbness tickling my calves, my shins feel as if the muscles and tendons are being torn off. I physically cannot take another step; my body won’t let me. My head isn’t strong enough to will my feet to move. It’s only Monday night. Five spent dollars and a miserable cab-ride later I arrive home just in time to see my head bowed on the reflection of the screen door. Someone left the light on for me. Unable to cry, I wet my face under the shower. Watered down mascara streams down my cheeks -effortless, yet, such a dramatic effect. So it is that I pat myself dry, revise the white towel for insulting, left over makeup marks and fantasize. The biggest and boldest fantasy I have dreamed up so far. It is this: an organization called The Working Class Poet’s Alliance. You see, there are times, don’t judge me, that I hate rich people. Not any particular person, per se, but rich people in general. I hate the way they have so many choices, to travel, to feed themselves, to entertain themselves and worst, to educate themselves. I am trapped, it seems, unable to go to the doctor (to see about my deteriorating feet) and compromising food and shelter for cab fair, because the job that I’m so committed to, that I go to four times a week, that facilitates my survival, the job I love so much, it takes it all out of me. When I see the WCPA I imagine a bunch of people in blue jeans. Mostly men and mostly in their twenties. I imagine them sitting around all jotting down notes, taking turns speaking, bringing up questions, crying about what makes them passionate and somehow is so out of reach: being poets. I can’t explain it, I feel differently about poetry. I approach it with a specific set of ideas and behaviors marked by my investigations into the hearts of Working Class people. There is no possible way that I can communicate it, I feel as though I’m speaking a different language. Yes, I already speak a different language, of course, but it’s even stranger than that one. I see us discussing a new strategy, where we decide the rules and the poetics. I fantasize about a support system that really functions, that inspires, that propels. I imagine people making discoveries and going communal with them. I dream of chapbook parties, weekend workshops, field trips, demonstrations, publications, topics of discussions, presentations, goddamned poems everywhere. Fever and sweat and maniacal kinship of letters and values. Jesus, sometimes when I come home at two in the morning, not from drinking, but from earning a living, I fantasize about not being alone and about making it.

for Baobob Tree

2009-07-13T15:33:00.005-06:00

I'm caught without words and, enters you. A proficient bundle. Fine and work, asleep on the pages. Pages a-flight. Baobob you are mouth and eyes, which are most important. Like a name, like the words “your neck” and “my mouth”. Or the future. Since we must, dance on the edges of a love affair, with unhinged success that only we know. Now actions, of bodies of glorious hands and voices of magnitude march. On now, Baobob, you light my evenings better than pastoral desire, and as good as the taste of fancy tequila and homemade hollandaise. You are my flame setting off incantations and enjambments like foreplay. Late night covers upon my bare exposed ambitions. Are supple and yellow with the hint of phosphorus in the breeze. My difficulty lies in the poems reaching a beyond made up of faces, but you hold my hand, offer solace and distance in every embrace of a youth armed with a pen. Baobob, your name, which is tree trunk, makes me thirsty, when I say it aloud. Look at me, light my cigarette and believe, I’m your hopeful contemporary, your unpublished fantasy and you are mine. Let's copy and paste, let's open mic, this is life that shines between us. You are my press and my literature, don't refuse my loyalty and call me Mrs. Tree.

pre-eclipsian entry (for Marlon)

2009-07-07T02:50:00.001-06:00

quote: "So what do you write?" "Your fucking face, biatch!" This is amazing, just so you know!

The thing is that it's difficult to place a value on poetry because it isn't marketable, as far as I can tell. Perhaps there are millionaire poets out there making bank from sonnets but poets are generally fucked in that department. It's too much of an art and less entertainment and let's face it: art makes you think, and entertainment distracts you from thought. If you're lucky, or if you're good, your writing does some of both.

I guess we just have to respect the art form itself, even if we sound snobbish and call ourselves writers and poets and really claim the poetry and the fiction we write as what we "do". Even among working class folks, or perhaps specially among them. I write poetry from the perspective that my work belongs to everyone. I buy books because I love to read. If more people read (whatever they chose to read) then there would be more readers in general and thus could live off our art-products. Non-readers are bolder, they will dare to read crazy ridiculous garbage because they have not developed criteria. They are our future audience, I say we snatch em up first!

Jesus, it's just that my work is so "out there" or at least I think it is and I'm self-conscious about it. Even though that's what I strive for "out there-ness" on the margins. But, like, seriously, try passing this off on the suburban, White, soccer mom or MILF. I'm not going to cut it, she'll pick up that new Deepak Chopra on the shelf faster than you can say Christal Light. Even your science fiction work is more accessible than my hybrid/queer/bilingual sex-obsessed poetry. Even publishing seems far-fetched. Aghhhhh! If only I could play the sax or paint a half-decent picture then I could "sell" something.

But I can't bring myself to write to a different aesthetic, to compromise. I can't figure out who i write for in the first place, much less to whom I need to be writing. But I maintain that language is really interesting and that experimenting with it is revolutionary, not to mention naughty. I think people could really benefit from that.

Donnie Darko

2009-07-06T10:40:00.002-06:00

Un pana sigue cantando esa canción de la pelicula y la tengo pegada igual que el (la canción) y pues decidí volverla a verla. Hace mas de una década que la ví por primera vez y no me acordaba de lo mucho que me identificaba con el personaje cuando era una adolecente. Esta película se considera "cult" y me extraña que yo, siendo tan individualista cuando estaba en la High, me apegara tanto a la historia. ¿Entonces mas de diez años despues, que pienso? Bueno, que es un trabajo de ciencia ficcion y por cierto fenomenal. Nacida en el tercer mundo (porque cuando nací se cronologizaban) encuentro que la ciencia ficcion es simplemente realismo magico con una Visa Platinum y me cuesta no espiritualizar eventos dentro de una historia, o mitificar la realidad, de paso. Ne he dormido mas que un par de horas pero tenia que ver Donnie Darko otra vez y decidí hacerle una entrada. Este es el video que dirigio Michel Gondry para Gary que interpreta el tema de Tears for Fears.

es julio y el blog ha cambiado

2009-07-01T07:28:00.003-06:00

Creo que ya me ha dado por re-inventar el blog y no hay nada que pueda hacer al respecto. Es inevitable. Al igual que yo me reinvento (tengo el acendente en piscis) y creo un nuevo avatar para moverme por el mundo: es cuestion de los nombres. Somos y no somos. Somos y percepciones tambien, como de broma. Feliz primer dia de julio!

Barista and Poet

2009-06-25T12:50:00.000-06:00

Sweet. So oftentimes I meet people who ask me, “So, what do you do?” Usually my answer is, “I make coffee for a living, but I write.” And the responses I get are enough to make me want to write a dissertation on the subject of my writing. Not that I have any college credentials, I hardly finished my sophomore year at Naropa, I would not be able to write a dissertation. But I feel as though I can’t just leave it at “coffee”. It’s a big lie if I stop there. It feels as if I’m denying something inherent about myself.

People respond in a variety of ways. Usually they are interested in knowing if I write Romance novels. When I mention poetry, they immediately assume I write flowery, pretty, angst-filled verses when it rains. “What are your poems about?” I can’t fucking answer this question, are you kidding?

“well I write about serial killers and necrophiliacs and depressed junkies, but also about cupid and Freud and like his homies who wrote some stuff about desire but mostly I write about language and the effect of language on the flow of gender as seen from a borderline immigrant gender perspective and it’s very violent or a little bit like gender but not just real gender which is a lie but fallacy gender in Spanglish sometimes with a lot of sex and use the word water over and over oh and the word language but usually I don’t really write ABOUT anything at all and I just kinda write from something and/or someone or both or towards something”

I wish I had a handy bottle of aspirin. It’s not enough that it looks like my writing isn’t really acquiring a readership: it’s not even managing a practice! Now I can’t even defend my aesthetic because my work isn’t accessible. If I can’t explain it to a five-year old (Theo, you are seven now) then should I even be writing it? What is the best way to handle a potential reader who might not even read poetry at all? How do I best answer this question? Am I being a snob?

PS. I don’t write “for fun”. I don’t write when I have “free time”. I don’t have any free time. I don’t friggin write under no darn tree, okay? I read there.

hispanohablantes que piensan?

2009-06-23T12:10:00.002-06:00

aqui, porno, erotismo, misogena, genero, cultura popular....

Viendo las líneas de una carretera te quedas

rubia de gestos, y perfil

de boca y tetas, de fragancia fértil

sobre un lenguaje seco, una

oralidad profunda, desviada

a semejantes porciones

sodomita natural, en practica

es lo mejor que puede pasar.

Si es pecado es aceptable, o salvaje

me tienes hecha género, con ese remeneo.

Old radiator, I will miss you

2009-06-10T04:38:00.001-06:00

I guess this is why people stop blogging

2009-05-17T12:47:00.000-06:00

Lately I haven’t felt that I’ve had much to say to, in or about the blog. How does this happen? That’s why people stop blogging, I guess. I’m not bored by it at all, it’s just that I’m the one feeling pretty uninteresting. But the point of the blog, or at least of my blog, is not performing, it is my tool, to freewrite about whatever. It is supposed to be a place where I work out and relate to my thoughts about language. Lately, I feel as though I have no business writing and am refusing to write, only reading. Except that I don’t commit to any book in particular and am currently toting “I No Longer Believe in the Sun” by Derek Fenner around town, along with Roget’s Thesaurus of Phrases (which is the greatest thing since thermal underwear). I can’t explain how geekily thrilling it is to read synonymic phrases: I am and forever will be improving my English. I’m thinking about making flashcards of my favorite phrases.

too early to read

2009-04-25T17:30:00.002-06:00

Saturday morning. I wake up and it's not really morning anymore, walk to my future home on the hill and retrieve a lease agreement. I think maybe the women I'm subleasing from are constantly "coked up". Start a mindless conversation with one, while the other looks for a sturdy, waterproof (it's drizzling) folder in which to tuck the legalities. Go out last night/yeah, I was in Denver/ oh awesome/you got coffee at Roma?/God, I need some... etc. The limited vocabulary of my generation frightens me. "It seems that we, like, only can make sentences, or whatever, that are like, the same. I don't know." And the damned "idontknow" at the end of every statement is, like, a dissafirmation of what was barely said. The "like" voids anything said with assertiveness. Is this oppression? I walk to Espresso Roma for something gluten-free and submerge my coffee in rice milk: I am a Boulder clichéd nightmare. There are no things I can eat and as I take my seat in a little theater inside the Hale building at CU, I notice that I have bad coffee jitters. Oh no, I will be reading soon! My hands shake and my mouth is dry. I can't read with the self-confidence of my teenage years in the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in San Francisco alley anymore. I am hyper-aware of my body, my sound, my shaking. Palimpsest is the journal of the humanities that comes out of CU. The editors have decided to have an early Saturday reading for the release of the new issue. The issue is not ready. It will be in mid-may. The poets read anyway. I'm wearing a leopard print, low-cut dress. It's low-cut because the triangle of black fabric at the bust was bulky and made me look like I was in my fifties and had bore three children and so I took a pair of scissors and altered the garment, to the best of my ability. The result calls to mind a word I am embarrassed to admit that I cherish: hussy. Is this sexism? Or feminism? I think of Anne Sexton and her readings, her disarming eyes, the buttons of her shirt, busting at the right moment... I think of Ryan Doyle May and his long time obsession with her. I too am becoming obsessed. I read and explain that my hands are shaky because of the coffee, not my nerves. It garners laughter from the audience. And when I am done I feel better. The sophomores who read and I make awkward conversation around the cheese platter afterwards. One of them tells me, "You are so commanding when you're reading, so authoritative". And I have no idea how. I'm acquiring tiny stretch lines where there weren't any before but no one is looking that closely.

mas abril

2009-04-18T19:30:00.004-06:00

The month of April is here and there was a time when it was imperative that it arrived. It is no longer the case; I don’t chase after wolf-men and find the entire fantasy world a little predictable. But I have been feeling the effects of Venus. She is in her “dark phase” they say. Not only her. Today, A asked if I wanted to make/build something. I don’t quite understand the rules of interrogation. Today M asked me, “Now, what?” and I said what I always say, when standing in the slush, late for a meeting, still tipsy from the evening before, “I have to go”. The colors out there seem to match Hope Sandoval and I keep thinking of Derek Frenner.

MK. Not Olsen, buy the other one and I, have started on the film, sort of. “We gotta do it now,” she said, yesterday and I’m pretty sure she means business; we won’t have snow or rain for too long. The sun will ruin everything with its dazzle. Do not fuck with the director’s light! Nederland should be nice and gray all week and so we need footage. For lack of moisture we use the reservoir. The film is looking like a lot of fun. It will either be brilliant or total crap. Our collaborative aesthetic is interestingly gray and red with some serious drug-afflicted imagery. It is carnivorous and carnal. Perhaps we will integrate a steak somehow. Ks photographs (which we’ll be using) are phenomenal. They already look like part of “S”. The chapbook is done and bound and I sold three of them yesterday, after I read at Boulder Bookstore. No, actually I sold one, for money. There is one out on credit and faith and yet another was traded for alcoholic mixed drinks. I can’t tell if I’m any good at a reading when I can’t hear myself through the speakers or if anyone else besides my friends like my work. I guess I’ll find out.

I can’t really tell if it’s spring or not. I don’t have a pair of Wellies and it’s driving me mad! There aren’t lilacs anywhere but in the Whole Foods florist buckets. That’s no guarantee that it is spring. I wish someone would simply proclaim spring here. Does that happen? Is there a date? I’ve been singing “Pennies from Heaven” in the shower, much to the irritation of my elderly neighbors. I just opened the window. Grey. Wet ground smells like an open wound.

sometimes I really want to write a fashion blog

2009-04-12T05:04:00.004-06:00

Black Cashmere vintage sweater, pink vintage elastic belt with gold hooks, sundress with tiny flowers circa 1994, black leggings from Target, Pashima gold scarf, Timberland faux lace-up suede boots, slouchy white bag from thrift store.

Nina

2009-04-11T21:57:00.000-06:00

Aries moon and Pisces rising when Venus travels retrograde in both signs

2009-04-09T02:17:00.002-06:00

On Friday, March 6, 2009, Venus reaches her station at 15° Aries 27', in preparation for a period of retrograde . . .

Significant aspects remain awakened including the awkward silence or the need to stay a square on April 3 from Venus to Pluto.

When difficulty strikes it is much simpler to turn retrograde, especially in the wee hours of April 4.

Flawed by interactions, which trigger more serious responses, the dictionary tells of more than the circumstances. Or so it might indicate. Such as the two of us in bed when something said or done in an innocent context may be taken to heart. May deliberately antagonize ‘other’ as we backfire. By turning at a profound degree.

When Venus moves back into Pisces on April 11, deep feelings can be awakened, especially for us who have Mutable Signs strength in their minds: the worst in human relationships, so far.

Look to the skies for some kind of general take with regard to the direction in which we presume to know one another. It is said that when Venus enters, valuable decisions will overtake the future. More fashion statements.

This is a difficult release. Of a profound and underlying crisis. The sign of her detriment presses for change. It concerns that which relates to the sign involved with Venus retrograde in early Aries. Either you or me.

Lost love may appear with the sex. Opposite a financial extravagance prominent in their minds. Do your best to resist the urge in general. Unresolved lesions from the past will come forward and demand resolutions at every level.

When Venus first halts as she prepares to move, she strains. When she slows to a stop before moving forward again. The direct station.

. . . motion that will last until April 17, 2009, when she turns direct at 29° Pisces 16'.

I applied for a scholarship

2009-04-08T01:59:00.000-06:00

I'm about to piss myself here...
I finally did it; I applied for the scholarship that I have been running away from
and more than audibly obsessed with for the past five years... I'm shrieking!
Here is part of my letter I had to write in which I describe my involvement with
communities of People of Color and of course I had to try to tackle the reality of
racism...

"I am an experimental, hybrid poet and translator. I use language, and I am also used by it, in a sense. I cannot write the “normal” and this is the basis of my poetics. I am not normal. I am a woman, hailed into that gender by sex: a rogue gender, a shrew gender. I am a raised-poor, working-class girl. What business do I have writing, right? Come on, I am a Latina! My concerns aught to be family and nurturing, not: getting an education, autonomy, or the freedom to choose what I will become. And last but not least, I am an immigrant. I’m scum, a job-stealing “beaner”. I should be something else than what I am trying to be, anything else, actually. Oh, but it turns out that I have a passion for literature. I’m in love with books, with writers, totally smitten. Luckily I speak English pretty well, for not being American, so I’m told. Maybe I have a shot. I haven’t always been sure that I would be a writer, but I’m willing to try despite all of the negating social narratives that seep in and which I can’t avoid. But I can go on despite them. So I find my own place from which to resist the discourse. Language builds, the poet experiments, new meanings arise, old ones become ruins. Perhaps that is why I write as I do. Always strangely, somewhat out of place, disruptive, seeking that border. Racism is one of the big narratives: a long, insidious, genocidal narrative that hooks us in, along with all the other active oppressions in our culture today. As such, racism normalizes certain absurd, confusing untruths. At the same time, it deems anything deviating from those lies, subhuman, abnormal and strange. I am, despite myself, deviant. My very body signifies rupture of normalcy."

it isn’t even Valentines day

2009-04-06T22:51:00.001-06:00

Dear R, S, and A,

I don not want to have dreams about you anymore. So please stop wearing pink shirts with maroon sleeves and walking past beachside hotels. Stop loving me like you do in my dreams. Sneaking around posts, sitting alone at the movies. I hear and see about you. Gondry, for example, tells me so. In many ways I armed with you. With the subtle mountain wind that now is a snowy mountain air. Somewhere I picked up the strange look you gave me that I can always guess is lurking. I have yellow and blue scarves; they help me remember to stop thinking about water. Yesterday in my room of the future, I thought about you, you and you. Because in the future I have a giant bed and outside both windows: trees. Crabapple and peach. In the future I never have to decide to cook, or work or read and next to whom? I carry you into scenes, some look like I’m sharing you with Gael, in others I’m Kate, with hair that takes color, not like this. Take color, take a drink of happy hour margarita and take refuge in the fact that it will be whether like this through the month of May. A late winter, so come to me in life and leave my sleeping times for trying to fly. That happens much less often now than you do.

Thank you,
la Bajo.

PS. The three of you wear glasses, why?

Ecue me?

2009-03-25T02:23:00.000-06:00

Music may be universal, but it’s not the universal language. Here are some very confused mishears from pop favorites. For more of the sort check out “Kiss This Guy”.

THE MISHEARD:
A gay pair of guys put up a parking lot.

REAL LYRICS:
They paved Paradise, and put up a parking lot.

Artist: Joni Mitchell
Song: Big Yellow Taxi

*
THE MISHEARD:
I scream my balls off

REAL LYRICS:
I screen my phone calls

Artist: No Doubt
Song: Spiderwebs

*
THE MISHEARD:
Stacks of cheese are very romantic

REAL LYRICS: Satin sheets are very romantic

Artist: Madonna
Song: Express Yourself

*
THE MISHEARD:
In fact I'm somewhat conceited

REAL LYRICS:
I’m back in Suffragette City

Artist: David Bowie
Song: Suffragette City

*
THE MISHEARD:
She's a fat armadillo

REAL LYRICS:
She's a bad mamma jamma

Artist: Stevie Wonder
Song: She's A Bad Mamma Jamma

*
THE MISHEARD:
but the cheetahs mugged my son

REAL LYRICS: but the kid is not my son

Artist: Michael Jackson
Song: Billie Jean

*
THE MISHEARD:
Shake it like a polar bear ninja.

REAL LYRICS:
Shake it like a Polaroid picture.

Artist: Outkast
Song: Hey Ya

Bilingual, bendito!

2009-03-24T03:39:00.001-06:00

Por culpa del bilinguismo. Las posibilidades del lenguaje que me habren la puerta, que se habren, para mi. It’s not that I particularly like being bilingue, es que no puedo evitar serlo. I want to think more about pre-language in the Big K sense. I wish I were in contact with S. Taylor or that he had a blog I could escape to. Today I thought I found Fausto’s blog. I wish that I had. I googled myself today, porque my vecino Tristan dice que el lo hace, o por lo menos, lo ha hecho. Vi una pelicula del Almodovar, con subtitulos en ingles. Tambien vi una entrevista corta de Big K. donde habla de echolalias y la fase pre-Oedipal…lo cual todavia tengo poco claro. Creo que el bilinguismo, de alguna manera me habre las posibilidades al igual que me limita. A veces me siento incapacitada, o mejor dicho, disabled, by the prescence of these two languages that cannot or should not co-exist. Pero la practica en buscar recursos linguisticos, metaforas, imagines, que asistan en la comunicacion o en la escritura es mucha. O sea, estoy bastante calificada en el processo de rebuscar palabras y de identificar contenido. Piezas de informacion linguistica. Unidades. Y tambien en la conversion de esas unidades, o por lo menos del significado. Metonomy and metaphor. Por ahora lo que se que tengo son dos dimensiones del lenguaje: el objeto visual de la palabra y su musica. In her interview Big K. was talking about how contentious language is excluded from language used to maintain ciertos discursos y que el lenguaje poetico representa una fisura en la narrativa y el discurso. Lo que la poesia es capaz de hacer, la mente bilingue lo hace sin esfuerzo. Isn’t that what the bilingual mind is set up to do, to disrupt social codes?

About "S" for MNP

2009-03-14T03:23:00.000-06:00

The novelty has more to do with the newly found relationship to the letter that I wrote first, the first letter ever. And to the impression it has left and all of its Significations on my particular chain of signs. S is also the beginning letter for some of my favorite words, most of which have other commonalities, the main one being desire. Spanish has the letter S, not the word, but the language; it accepts such a sound as the one S makes. S is static in Spanish. But S is changeable in English. It transforms itself into a new sound if it has the letter h after it, for example. The letter h is a mute, a silent letter in Spanish. S is mystical. It is one half of the symbol for a Mobius strip, one half of infinity; is infinity. It is an organic shape, irregular, and natural. As found in landscapes; feminine, female. But my S belongs in seascape; feminine, female. If you are standing above water, and a drop of water happens to fall onto that water, you see concentric circles. Yours and the water’s plains are parallel. If this picture is dissected and is placed perpendicular to you, the ripples look more like Ss snaking away on their bellies. Fractals. A fisherman knows this and more about water. Water has more to do with the letter S than the letter S itself.

Blue does turn a consuming color as long as it is on the horizon. As long as there is water in relationship to our sky. Much like salt will pull moisture from our tissues, our gaze will be consumed by that blue saltpeter. Yes, I was hoping to speak of intermittence under the tension of a stare, a gaze. A modified version of W. E. B. DuBois “Double Consciousness” the “I” existing doubly, the “I” being the feminine “terrain”, a concept inherited from colonization. The “I” in the text is often female, but the subject speaking isn’t. The sea is always feminine, in the Freudian sense that it desires a subjectivity, which can only be attained by the acquisition of the masculine (subjectivity), of the fisherman. Which can only mean death for him. The reflective property of water has some significance. It offers the masculine a gaze, his own, and repels it. Which is the kind of effect that Manet’s painting has. One is no longer the only spectator; the prostitute is armed with a gaze herself.

Even if the course is drawn, the curves allow multidirectionality. Like approaching meaning through sentences. This is the response to the question about earnest, like a map is? A lot of these sentences are bilingual accidents, by-products of the collision of two languages and a formation of imagery, to spite meaning and signification. The course is fluid, yes. We must press because it is the only way to perceive, the only way to know to travel, move. We press because in pressing we discover the integrity of an “I”, but we’re always unsure, because it is unsure. We press in order to keep discovering a “me” and a “you”. We press in order to keep track of the tide, in and out. We do so in order to keep track of the movements of a beloved. Or else how could we reel them in? Or attempt to? When we press, we are agreeing to pretend, but the language has no body, nor does the other, nor do we. Language holds the promise of malleability/flexibility, momentarily. Until we discover that it doesn’t seem to act. In displacement, we can think of a bucket of water, dropping a toy boat on the water and watching the level rise. This is if you are outside. When we place our bodies in water to float, we are mystified by our weightlessness, reminded of our fragile life, held up through our buoyancy and our edges. We trust language, but should we? The levels of water are irrelevant, what matters is our floating, our breathing and the memory of the bliss of an amniotic swim. There it is really important. Just at this point I feel as though I should go back to the text and write more. Is the work ever done? This feels like a translation. At some point you just have to tell yourself, “Give it up!” But these questions make me more curious.

Ashé

2009-03-10T16:57:00.003-06:00

Prayer to Chango
translated from the Spanish

My Father,
Lord of the Thunder,
I place my home
in your care.
May I always be in your protection.
May I be spared
when your angered voice
shouts in heaven.
I call respectfully to you
from below,
so that you may keep
my house in order.
My Father,
you must know
that I call to you
from my heart,
kneeling before your feet,
to say,
‘Oh, Lord of the Thunder,
loving King,
walk in joy
upon the Earth,
and protect me!’.

Prayer to Oshun
edited translation

May you live, Mother, forever.
Live forever in our traditions.
You, who are the spirit of the river,
who are the turtle drummer,
please open to me the path of attraction.
Oh, Mother of Praise!
You cleanse the spirit inside out
for the brass maker never pollutes the waters.
We are entitled to wear the crown
which rules over all pleasure.
We are entitled to awaken such pleasure.
Oh Oshun,
you are the spirit of the Earth who wanders freely,
be praised!

Prayer to Yemayá
translated from the Spanish

Holy Black woman
with seven stripes
upon your face.

Divining queen,
receive our salute.
Mother,
owner of all seas.
Mother of the fishermen.

There and far
you keep your throne,
your seat.

Beneath the sea
is where you keep
your riches
for your faithful child.

To you, my Mother,
I am grateful.

I've been published in Derivas!

2009-03-10T01:19:00.000-06:00

Que emoción! It took a while but my translation in Derivas. I translated a portion of "Beloved Integer" by Michelle Naka Pierce and it's in. They didn't keep the format though...weird...

sometimes I want to write a fashion blog

2009-03-09T14:04:00.006-06:00

not that I am fashionable, but more like
anti-fashion, however, I would like to
take fashion seriously, or maybe just
pretend to do so
perhaps I'm just distracting myself from
the real work, I haven't read in ages or
blogged or wrote in a journal at all in
a while
last week I needed to apply to schools
and didn't
this week I need to apply for schoolarships
and I probably will do that at least
in the meantime I'm contemplating the
female body and sifting it through capitalism
and the fashion industry, I'm also
contemplating comedy, you see, I'm not
very funny, perhaps I should work on that

Je ne understando...

2009-02-24T03:59:00.003-07:00

Haven't really been "about" my blog recently ever since I sliced my finger off in the espresso grinder a good three weeks ago. Strange. All I can think about is how writing is "my destiny". I'm dreaming about it. Apparently I'm not the only one dreaming. M has been doing a lot of dreaming lately. The finger grew back. I've been watching Heroes (the TV show) in this bootleg Arab website where they have all the seasons. The funny part is that there is a Japanese actor playing a Japanese superhero (his name is Hiro), who speaks in Japanese occasionally-but then they subtitle it in Arabic! Okay, so perhaps it's not the funniest thing you've ever read, but what makes me curious about it is that apart from being mildly annoyed, I seem to engage it quite well (if I focus on other clues about the plot) such as the intonation, acting, editing, sound, etc. This may seem stupidly obvious to the average person: you compensate when necessary. But to me, as a translator, as a bilingual writer, this is hugely interesting. It makes me think of limitations within writing (blog, poetry, translation) as different reception and response sites. What am I without my r. index finger: can't hold a pen, can't type? What kind of language is born? Writing as privilege. Bilingualism as disability? Restriction, mobility, orality, auditorality? Is that even a word...? In Heroes, there is another superhero, called Claire. She has the gift of speedy cell re-generation, whenever injured, her body simply heals itself, she re-grows limbs, resurrects and is unharmed. Perhaps I can re-grow language and keep blogging, translating, writing as before. Wait.

injured funger

2009-02-05T12:44:00.002-07:00

si I thiught that ut mught be funny and perhaps unterestng ti try ti di
thus wuthiut my rught undex funger as U unjured ut at wirk twi
days ago and makes typing and wrutung very duffucult
as ut turns iut ut usn't that much fun and havung trued
ut U think I wull just gi back ti lettung my face mask dry

El Amor de Gertrudis y Alicia

2009-01-29T03:35:00.000-07:00

Era ella. Ella. Eran ella, era, ella era. Eran ellas, de ella. Erran ellas. De ella, en ellas. En ellas erran, ella y era. Erran de ella, en era, ellas de era. De ellas, era ella. Erra. En erra, eran y de ella. Eran. En consecuencia de ella. Por ella, por secuencia. Ellas, ella, y con. Secuencia, con. O sin. Consecuencia, en secuencia. Con consecuensia. Ellas o sin. Sin secuencia, o con o sin consecuencia. O con éllas en secuencia. Las dos, el con o el sin o secuencia. Consecuentemente en consecuencia, sin secuencia ellas dos. Una u otra. La una y la otra. Otra una, ella. Ella una, ella, dos. Siendo en una, ellas dos, en una y una. Las dos. Ella una, ella dos. Ellas, en una. Ella en ellas dos. Una que vive en las dos. Una que sigue la otra, que vive en las dos. Las dos, una. Una y una, las dos, que viven en dos. Una por una que sigue. Dos. Dos por una, viven en una, en otra. En la otra las dos, viven. Siguen viviendo en la una, las dos. Las dos caben en una, y en la otra.

from Venepoetics

2009-01-28T02:15:00.003-07:00

Interesting and incumbent post:

http://venepoetics.blogspot.com/2009/01/nunca-me-he-preocupado-por-que-mis.html

Thanks, Guillermo!

or Polemic

2009-01-23T02:07:00.003-07:00

Back to the thinking about writing. Back to attempting to bridge these two clashing patterns, to try and make anything wearable out of them. Feeling, lately, that I'm inadequate to write poetry in my native language, which is to say that everything I write is trite, flowery, ornate. It doesn't help that disrupting the line, which for me so far has been to decenter grammar, disrupt meaning, impregnate the sentence and trouble gender using eros and entering into an argument with him, seems to be out of the question. What is it that we fear? Are my questions not "big" enough? Are we afraid to ask the simple questions? Young people, children, can ask the simplest questions, but are they really? "Do you think I'm like Picasso?" He was only four years old. What do you say to that?

Who/what am I writing for? What/where am I writing from? Do we ever stop? Asking? Maybe Neruda would say, "No". Maybe Lorca would say, "Ask? I never ask." But I cannot seem to get over the hump. I'm not writing what I want to be writing, not in Spanish, I'm not. I feel young and that terrifies me. Mr. F (you can see our exchange on Silliman's blog) uses the word "adolescent" like it's the worse goddamned insult to shoot at someone's work. I get it, okay! But really, youth? This is nothing like young, sure, challenging, puerile writing. It feels serious and not playful. Where is that confident, educated, American voice, now? This is endless...

But wait, if I am the writer who will later, much later, become the writer I want to become, then isn't this moment absolutely necessary? Isn't this the moment of discovering language and gauging the terrain for a map? Yes. Maybe. Mapmaker, go, topographer, go. Language is out there: your future readers want a treasure hunt.

from "HACHE" el blog de Heriberto Yepez

2009-01-22T03:35:00.000-07:00

"...porque escribir siempre tiene algo de falso y coloquialmente rebuscado—"

¿Que quiere decir? I'm afraid of being unable to speak, think, write in Spanish.
I'm terrified of lacking in the language. ¿Que significa? That all writing is
insufficient, or that all writing in any language is forced? What are the
implications? What about not having a vocabulary like M's? Or having one
like Mr. F. (pedantic and patronizing) with which to intimidate or to expand
upon complex ideas, sounding complex the whole way through, 'steada simplifying? Yo no
puedo. (Back to Maria and her capacity to write with the languages). Or
Harryette Mullen's capacity to incorporate homonyms and rhyme,
or in other words, the life of a language. Creo que me saco el pelo
antes de resolver este problema.

respuesta a XV por el blog del 20

2009-01-21T03:13:00.001-07:00

De palabras. Incomodas al estar
situadas, Hablarse es dibujar
el mapa (que usamos para locarte)
sobre la marea. Usted, tu. La lluvia
sen encarga de hacernos “voyeurs”
mirandote, mirandonos. Mas recuerdos
significan torrentes, es la gota diciplinaria,
el borrador. Solamente por proximacion
entendemos lo dicho. La relacion entre dos
y por eso. La nieve es simplemente
la lluvia vista con los ojos dañados por el
salitre de estos lados. Te miras tambien.
Con los ojos marchando alrevez. Todo
ya, inclusive. El sueño especialmente.
Y no decimos nada, ya nadie recuerda
que nunca llueve en marzo, de que no
haya luz, de que todos los peces andan
por afuera, o de que en verdad habremos
naufragado. Sin que se nos haya
ocurrido a ninguno.

Derivas.

2009-01-21T02:20:00.002-07:00

si sigues el link para Derivas, en vez de encontrarte con la pagina anunciandote una falla, te encontraras con una sorpresa:
el mensaje esta en escritura homofona... es super comico!

Entrevista con Harryette Mullen

2009-01-20T04:06:00.006-07:00

Cynthia Hogue se refiere al libro “Trimmings” de Harryette Mullen y comenta:

“…el lenguaje, mas que en sujeto para analisis, se convierte en vehiculo de expression y el genero se convierte en un tema que en verdad estas contemplando”

Pero el intento en este lenguaje tiene, por naturaleza del mismo, que enfrentarse a una discussion sobre “el lenguaje” si empezamos a perturbar el genero y el sujeto. La estructura binaria del español no nos permite ignorar los articulos al hablar de genero. Ademas de empezar una tarea tintada del feminismo tambien entramos al territorio “trans”. Trans-exual, Trans-late. Trans-port. Parece todo estar en un espacio de movimiento sin finalizar. Una especie de busqueda, de experimento, de aproximacíon. Al traducir, no nos podremos nunca aproximar al original. En particular, porque el primero tampoco pudo. El significado es un aterrizaje sobre un planeta que parece estatico. El problema es acercarce lo suficiente al pensar del poeta del idioma original: la traduccion es adivinanza. Mas bien usar la baraja.

Para mas en ingles: Interview with Harryette Mullen. Cynthia Hogue, Bucknell University, 1999.

y pensar que ando atrasada como una década…..

Conección Fallada

2009-01-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

El deseo se construye donde cabe la arquitectura. El diseño de un espacio en que la ortografía sale sobrando. Hoy me adhiero a opinar que lo erotico es juego de la imaginacion, igual a un niño (de Atocha, Mercurio) en agua. Volátil. Regreso al punto de nacer las palabras. Como verano, brota, se desplaza para aliviar a los muchachos en El Barrio. Buscamos nuestro par. Aquel mito no pierde consistencia. Aquello extraña, todavia confunde: donde exactamente se encuentra el genero? En que orificios del lenguaje nos caben esos signos? Ninguno hizo señales. Ambos parecen ser articulos que prendieron fuego. Ya no nos alcanza el idioma, ni las partes definidas, ni el regreso a ningun momento, nunca. Hay facilidad en amenazas. Afuera la nieve late con calor propio, soltando humo. Y adentro, la especie se hace preguntas. Regresan, una vez mas, al texto.

Post Data: ando buscando pruebas para la existencia de teoria dentro de un baul.

Babelpez

2009-01-16T02:37:00.000-07:00

Seamos llanos: si, nosotros. Habrá un par. Conmutan en intercambio de nombres, como dos alguienes flexibles. No hay -nada- que asistirnos en hablar aguas. Presionamos la lengua contra la otra, como si en idioma. Sea un bocado o una cosa corpórea, entera. Permite que nos guardemos de ser, carnada. Deseo. Despierte en la arena. Sacuda el sol apagado, la niebla umbillical. Las gaviotas son consecuencias de haber dormido en conjunto.

cut-up de Joserramón Melendes

2009-01-15T04:11:00.001-07:00

Este poeta es fabuloso. Yo no sé porque no se lee mucho. Quizas es porque es un personaje dificil de digerir. Pero a mi, todavia, me resulta un genio. Ortografía tediosa a parte, es muy buena conversacion, si no monologo, frente al Burger King de Santa Rita.

I.

Mañana se depende de Norteamérica. Mañana es la visita. Con un instante exacto, después. ¿Que existe? ¿Que no pueden? En ese instante los borré, mañana. Amanecer. Guardar dias, escribiendo nada. ¡Espera, hombre!

II.

Se siente buscar. En el sexo. Un circuito cerrado, permanece. Estamos como el cerebro. Otro circuito. Esa mujer me amó. Tantas, podría. Fue ella. Sobre la gente. Un orgasmo a veces, varias, comenzaba.

Melissa Responde

2009-01-14T04:22:00.002-07:00

Melissa sent you a message.

--------------------
Subject: in responce to blog for January 11. you should copy and paste it.

abandonar al lector, al ojo que es sin quererlo mi testigo. a veces no lo quiero y mucho menos lo necesito. pero por ejemplo, yordano, ese cantante venezolano que tanto cante en la sala de mi casa en 1989, yo fui su oido, y no se si en serlo note que a veces me abandono, que no le interesabe mu oreja, y si alguna vez tambien descidio a la hora del almuerzo, en el momento de que noto que la toalla se le habia roto, que era hora de tomar otras rutas sabiendo que yo me quedaba como tonta esperandolo en la parada del bus.

yordano el venezolano canta, no me hicieron falta palabras, el silencio dejo sin rumbo la noche.
--------------------

fun with babelfish

2009-01-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

This was an older blog entry that I had "translated" at babelfish and then went to work on. The original is in Spanish:

I am the one, of that one night, the unexpected privacy… You lean in one siluette, shades before one gray dust… I am the fleeting proposal and they call " to me: juego". Constantly animal. I bring forth blood without wetting the tenderness… You remember? As you landed with your eyes of a cat on the mark of a moon… This is a letter of doubtful character… It has new growth, it enters seed, to walk that. It renders you… Thus you advance: with the lips first. You and I have populated the face, the ears and hair. In you, I have myself broken, until choking. There are numbers for the fingers, no lances that we make immovable. We erupt, added to a slap, silent, with the laughter, meters, of doors and windows. The knowing everything and we did not remember. Drenched in a uterine lake like seals at rest. I am one that wants to, you, you doubted although it is so and it does not let to you go without first: the death of my arms, the effort of yours. To us, it seemed we were buried.

Transladablog

2009-01-13T14:41:00.001-07:00

El hecho de publicarse en multilenguas es problemático. Dudoso. ¿Por qué no tengo la facilidad oral que tiene, María, por ejemplo? Un lenguaje aislado, que se retira de los lectores porque carga un cano. Y una confusión áspera, viviente. Dondequiera que voy, estoy escribiendo sonetos y poemas de amor. Odio, odio este lenguaje, me parece rotundo, arcano. Antiguo. ¿Hasta cuando los ritmos marino? ¿Las cadencias irresistibles? ¿Los muslos, los contornos de este idioma, infiel? Objeto. Quiero salir de este mar romántico con un lenguaje, como un objeto, una escultura y ponerlo dentro de una galería, con un titulo que no es, como Duchamp. Esto no es un poema, esto no es un leguaje en uso. Esto no tiene significado. ¿Por qué belleza? Max Regan escribió un poema en el que la belleza es un personaje, a las tres de la mañana, caminando por las calles rumbo a su casa. Nadie le ofrece “pón”, nadie le presta chavos y le faltan tres pesos para pagar un taxi. No la quieren, no la estiman, le vierten cerveza e insultos… Quiero tener los recursos para escribir lo que escribo, como escribo, pero en español. Traducción.
La maldita traducción…