We present this work in honor of the 90th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Pascual Contursi Argentine 1888 – 1932
Bandoneon of the slum, old deflated bellow I found you like a baby that a mother abandoned, at the door of a convent without plaster on the walls, under the light of a little lamp that at night it illuminated you.
Bandoneon, because you see that I am sad and I can no longer sing, you know that I carry in the soul branded a pain.
I took you to my room, I cuddled you against my cold chest, I was also left abandoned in my digs. You have wanted to console me with your rasping voice and your painful note increased my illusion.
We present this work in honor of National Missing Children’s Day.
Juan Gelman Argentine 1930 – 2014
crestfallen my burning soul dips a finger in your name / scrawls your name on the night’s walls / it’s no use / it bleeds dangerously /
soul to soul it looks at you / becomes a child / opens its breast to take you in / protect you / reunite you / undie you / your little shoe stepping on the
world’s suffering softening it / trampled brightness / undone water this way you speak / crackle / burn / and love / you give me your nevers just like a child
This morning I woke up saddened. This land can’t give any Wonder. Is it impossible for this Insanityland to grow a little bit (a little green corner) of Wonder? This land is sadder than a woman asking for sugar. This morning I woke up downright depressed. And I have 35 reasons. Someone has to be guilty of planting the bombs around this Wonderlessland. Without poetry readers these bombs are invisible, they don’t make noise, don’t cause panic. These are perfect bombs that kill soundlessly. These are the modern bombs that man invented, they kill like falling leaves. But leaves in the forest, they aren’t, falling are bombs. In the cities, every day, every hour, and people think that it’s winter arriving. Why would they plant so many bombs in this Wonderlessland and in so many countries like this one, Wonderless. Is it that they are filled with wonder seeing how their bombs explode over our houses, on the heads of our children, onto our beds and tables; our chairs become matches. And what will happen to the people of this Land who don’t react? The people of this land are living in the bombs’ ruins and don’t react and don’t even try to wake up sad, at the very least, like I do, this January morning. You go out onto the street and no one hears the bombs, they don’t see the mutilated children wrapped in the aura of their own pain, I don’t know if no one sees them or hears them or if they don’t want to see or listen. These are the modern bombs that humanity has invented, bombs against hearing, against listening. Bombs that destroy everything with the greatest possible sensibility and diplomacy. Peaceful bombs that burn, mutilate, uproot the tree trunks and turn the butterflies from Patagonia’s Eden of dreams into wild monsters. They invented their silent pacifist bombs that day after day they shoot at us with their missile launchers and no one hears, or sees, or feels anything. This is Insanityland, no Wonder no green, no red kiss, no flow of children across a field, this is the land of total destruction, of catastrophe approaching all that is possible. I go into the street and scream: Hey, you! Hey, you! Hey you, Dominicanne! But no one hears or sees or feels anything, I go through the streets and the bars and all the hang outs showing people a mutilated child and they don’t see him, they don’t see him. Don’t you see this child who I have by the hand? I say to some friendly beer drinkers at a downtown bar. Where? Where? they say, and keep drinking. The world is a beerzy lane. I prefer to think that nobody hears anything because the noise from bombings across the land doesn’t let them think.
A butterfly once bestowed her passion Upon a sailor – in her fashion Flitting about the hotel gate Waiting, ecstatic, to follow her mate Upon his white cap to alight Then onto his white ship, at dizzying height She flew to the vessel’s high-reaching stack At her first glimpse of ocean quite taken aback. On him she lavished all the rapture Her brief day’s span of life could capture Singing: O lovely Sailor! O Sailor, my love Our happiness lights the heavens above In the afternoon as the sun sank low From the sailor’s eyes sad tears did flow So to distract him from his sorrow She danced in the air without thought of the morrow. From the white masts she drifted away As a mighty gust interrupted her play. Into the gray sea she fell and drowned The stalwart sailor heard not a sound But all unaware a salty tear Rolled down his cheek, though he felt no fear, Marking the end of the love so true Of the butterfly and the lad in blue.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 45th birthday.
Andrés Neuman Argentine b. 1977
My attention steps down from its center like an oil stain.
Contradictory hand: while it feigns snatching specific objects, its fingers count digressions. Is to touch to have faith?
I attend to that shoe that almost frees itself from a young woman’s heel, to the deaf-mute debates on the TV in the back, to the impatient tics of the light and, just every so often, to the time I have left.
I invented time to say your name. Because my voice wanted it, there were violets in summer and wisteria in autumn. I was the one who shaped the space to make room for your shadow. And because my eyes asked for it the sky changed its tone. Undoubtedly, I am the owner of everything.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 70th birthday.
Maria Negroni Argentine b. 1951
Am I that woman in the dance raising inexperience like light addressing herself like a feather to her most elusive whereness? Strange flower growing soft out of the frame of language trying on sandals and flinging into writing unscathed by writing.
Winding the body’s lexicon it hit me in the takeaway shown my treasure in nothing I wavered: submit or escape it’s a question of what is lost in the beat of a voluptuous skirt what battle is evaded what dire endearing enemy abandoned.
Strange as if lit from within with the indicative expounding from neckline to poem curve I learned to conjugate affairs but for what if the nitty-gritty of nothing like eternity consisted in leaving me naked doubtlessly an odd privilege.
What if time were lawless? Where do you keep what wasn’t? They go on like this and that you never know what kills you and January sun and you just came just like a breath and worked me to confine my body’s surrounds to the exacting beauty of lack.
And I who’d thought to interject geography as flamboyant sun retrace my past in slip-ups sweet-talking myself tough and even pin on you a trinket clinched knees sissy feet which you’ll interpret as expertise but is just a pretense for hurt.
If together where the belly bends if I contracted and opened for you if something like a sky disclosed to what encloses inside blue if you drew me so disposed if I existed where you lost me if a spasm and other orphandoms if imperfection is a gift.
Contrary to the clock hands too long in two voices unreleased you walk me through my legs to tumult with no predicate while I angle for the occasional avails of female cunning tattooing the flipside of language digits an animal won’t give up.
Night is a house to wander with Spanish moss poison I mean, to look for looseness beyond your foremost failure maybe that was the attraction out of all you gave me and got how you tossed me into boleos heart antsy the secret clear.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
Oliverio Girondo Argentine 1891 – 1967
I play I play pores cables keys coves I play on subjects of nerves wharves weavings that play upon me scars cinders tropical bowels I play only only undertows hangovers heavy breathing I play and moreplay and nothing
Prefigures of absence inconsistent tropes what a you what a what what a flute what loot what hollows what masks what empty lonely reaches what a yes what a no what a yesno fate putting me out of tune what reflexes reflect what deeps what wizard material what keys what nocturnal ingredients what frozen shutters that do not open what a nothing I play wholely
We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Ricardo Molinari Argentine 1898 – 1996
Over the wide cold leaves of time you arrive, stained by the fleeting sun of the rainy seasons on the plains. You come lukewarm in color and shivering, and my heart feels the bliss, holds it, from a word unspoken, and the murmuring steps on the grass cover the ennui, the glow, of an essence withheld, drowned and remote. You gather a robe around you—proper, singular—, folding it around you around you, curved to fit the bone. How much of the soul, what depths of the soul you want to enter you, to touch you lightly in passing! Yes: even as air enters the mouth, claustral and flaring. You go with the ocean tides and the watery brilliance of the slow, final skies, which go veiled toward the south where the great red bustard flies and nests, and the night turns back and calls full of anguish under the flowering darknesses, nostalgic and scattered.
Poets Corner 