I tried to defend you,
I thought there might be
Someone else who loved you
As I love you.
Here I am, beneath you
Caressing your precious timber,
Protecting you with my hands
From those who claim to love you.
Lies!
They see you bleed and they laugh as they stuff their pockets
With dollars, from your suffering.
I am a woman
Round as the universe
A pyramid that ignores its secrets
Triangular in some parts
with perfect and calculable hypotenuses
on any one of its sides.
I am a woman
Square and stubborn
when it’s about you
Pentagonal when I plan
the most secret of my weapons
I am a woman
Lineal
the shortest distance
between your all and my nothing
I am a woman
point
perhaps of your references
The new skirt, the vague gesture
cigarette in hand,
the daily inversion of time
intranscendent;
its emptiness pointing at us,
making us feel like parasites,
spider weaver of a useless web
that wraps and suffocates us.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 155th birthday.
Ox that I saw in my childhood, as you steamed
in the burning gold on the Nicaraguan sun,
there on the rich plantation filled with tropical
harmonies; woodland dove, of the woods that sang
with the sound of the wind, of axes, of birds and wild bulls:
I salute you both, because you are both my life.
You, heavy ox, evoke the gentle dawn
that signaled it was time to milk the cow,
when my existence was all white and rose;
and you, sweet mountain dove, cooing and calling,
you signify all that my own springtime, now
so far away, possessed of the Divine Springtime.
Time is hunger, space is cold
Pray, pray, for prayer alone can quiet
The anxieties of void.
Dream is a solitary rock
Where the soul’s hawk nests:
Dream, dream, during
Ordinary life.
Waxen whores and young Anabaptists
cross paths beneath this window in the Tremol Hotel.
I sleep here.
I eat in this gold and hibiscus dining room.
Every night I dance with Zulita.
Every morning the man at the next table wishes me good day.
This is in the Tremol Hotel, beneath whose windows
the paths cross
of waxen whores and young Anabaptists.
But I have a soul as tender as marshmallows,
and my eyes flash on and off like the intermittent neon signs.
That’s why I love this hotel, this little rest, a locket of serenity.
Across the street, a sad sidewalk and a public clock drawn my eye each year,
and thereupon I invent a tenderness old and ripe.
In the Tremol Hotel, no one know me yet,
in spite of my familiarity with its doors and its swallows.
No one, maybe not even aviators,
can treasure as I do
these post-card memories.
I
Outside
is desert
keen to be river
there’s laughter I don’t listen to
folk walk around
whose hearing is blind
outside no hugs are given
there’s haste and abysses
bridges have gone missing
II
Outside
there are no dogs in the street
no tiny red turtles
not one lizard
basking in rooftop sun
III
Outside
is the moon whose breast
gapes with wounds
a plague of poets
fouls the silence
the tree says goodbye to its roots
and no one feels sad
art like crime
leaves its trail of clues
IV
Outside
there’s dirty linen
shamelessly displayed
trash is deep
outside it’s sickening
deep is the past
deep the future
there’s dried-up vomit
in the volcano’s crater
field on field
of lamentation
there’s Washington
Iraq
Somalia
Haiti
V
Outside
it’s dangerous
to break the spell
there are black verses
forever on everyone’s lips
outside I panic
the sweet names
are exhausted
VI
Outside
there’s no cosy bed
no sheet without stains
no eye pure in its seeing
no easy distances
no mother
no father
outside is a landscape
of forgotten letters
VII
Outside
a child
bursts waiting into tears
there are ulcers in the shadows
traffic in caprice
and other narcotics
books no one will read
outside is absence
VIII
Outside there’s reliable evidence
of angels who rain down coffee
there are tricksters
old photographs
clever flowers
that fade on cue
outside dreams hurt
and drums rumble with evil
cracks in the earth
are spreading
IX
Outside
the poor come back
to die in traps
there’s hunger and a
closed horizon
outside is long
narrow
dry
there’s dust
bones
and a welter of bodies
in a common sky
X
Outside
another outside
is under construction.
XI
Within
joy is here within
deep within
dig
and water gushes
within is Nicaragua.
I love this body of mine that has lived life,
its hip flask outline, its softness of water,
the spurting of hair that crowns my cranium,
the crystal glass of a face, its delicate base
that ascends faultless from shoulders and collarbone.
I love my back, gullible to turned-off stars,
my revealed hills, fountains of the chest
that provide the first sustenance of the species.
Coming out of the ribs, mobile waist
overflowing and warm vessel of my stomach.
I love the moon curve of my hips,
moulded by alternate pregnancies,
the vast roundness of the wave of my gluteals,
and my legs and feet, foundations and support of the temple.
I love the handful of dark petals, the hidden fleece
that stores the dawning mystery of paradise,
the humid cavity where blood flows
and living water shoots out.
This hurting body of mine that gets sick,
that festers, that coughs, that perspires,
secretes moods, feces, saliva,
and that gets tired, exhausted, and withers.
Living body, link that assures
the infinite chain of successive bodies.
I love this body made of the purest mud:
seed, root, sap, flower, and fruit.
Oscar, yuh surprise me
assin far a love poem.
Ah sing a song a love fa meh contry
small contry, big lite
hope fa de po’, big headache fa de rich.
Mo’ po’ dan rich in de worl
mo’ peeple love fa meh contry
Fa meh contry name Nicaragua
Fa meh peeple ah love dem all
Black, Miskito, sumu, Rama, Mesitizo,
So yuh see fa me, love poem complete
‘Cause ah love you too.
Dat no mek me erase de moon
An de star fran de firmament.
Only somehow wen ah remenba
how yuh bussing yo ass
to defend dis sunrise, an keep back
de night fran fallin,
ah know dat tomara we will have time
fa walk unda de moon an stars.
Dignify an free, sovereign
Children a Sandino.
Kisses don’t wither
like the flowers of the malinche tree,
hard shells of seeds don’t grow over my arms;
I’m always flowering
with this internal rain,
like the green patios in May
and I laugh because I love the wind and the clouds
and the singing birds that pass overhead,
even though I’m entangled with memories,
covered with ivy like old walls,
I go on believing in the secret whisperings,
the strength of wild horses,
the winged message of gulls.
I believe in the countless roots of my song.
Poets Corner 