Known unnamed

There has to be a kind of speech

beyond naming, or even praise,  

a discipline                                  

that locates light and lets it go.   

- "Observer", by Nate Klug

It is not lust
(or at least not yet)
which only makes it more beautiful
and more confusing

It is your hand caressing
the cloth that keeps my arm
your face seeking closeness to mine
closeness alone

your hand resting on my bare skin
your whole body resting
beside my uninterrupted nakedness
just resting

even when I feel you awakening next to me
your hand rests
and remains
and keeps the stillness

No error of method: an invisibly unstable world

Not seeing me, not even looking,
K. on her silver cruiser charms her way

through the last long moment
of the changing light:

a rolled-up yoga mat in her basket
wobbling like a wild tiller as she pedals.

It feels illicit and somewhat right
to stand accross the intersection

without shouting
her name, or even waving.

According to the internet
tutorial, the fact that photons

turn into tiny loyal billiard balls
as soon as we start watching suggests

no error of method
or measurement, but rather,

as fas as anyone can tall,
an invisibly unstable world,

a shaking everywhere
that seeing must pin down and fix.

So, that morning I stumbled on you
out, alone, bending through

the traffic at Orange and Edwards Streets:
a someone else then

whom I, alone,
can never otherwise see-

there has to be a kind of speech
beyond naming, or even praise,

a discipline
that locates light and lets it go.

"Observer", by Nate Klug


(Corolario para Known unnamed)

True Love I

"Un día te vas a enamorar de un hombre, y vas a hacer todo lo que él te diga".

(o, de la ilusión de la obediencia como signo inconfundible del fervor amoroso)

(o, de la pregunta: ¿por qué llamamos "amor" a las formas en que una persona ejerce poder sobre otra?)

Ahí les dejo esta piececita pa' que echen el bailongo, chatos:

"María Cristina me quiere gobernar

y yo le sigo le sigo la corriente

porque no quiero que diga la gente que

María Cristina me quiere gobernar"

True Love II - Quien te quiere bien, te hará sufrir

(o, de la legitimación de la violencia)

Teeth lined up in perfect rows

There are things that I've seen in my head while I'm sleeping in bed

They do not wither in the morning light

I'm taken back, oh I'm taken back to the dry grass and the shadows

Thinking I'd like to look at your teeth lined up in perfect rows

A maze of children feeding orchard trees

Where the flat lands stretch inside your mouth

And when you laugh all the star-thistles stumble out

The flat lands stretch inside your mouth

And when you laugh all the star-thistles stumble out

(I'm taken back, oh I'm taken back to the dry grass and the shadows)

Bones they are trees, not enemies

And I collect their skin
Yes I need their bark
For my new kind of hide in my new kind of dark

For these fruits that we have grown have froze heavy on the vine
Winter brew is born from the temporal and rime
Yeah the thicket and the thistle cry: new kind of wild!
Drink up to new dead and new alive

Portraits (en orden de aparición)

I.
Sonríe. Desmorona pan, se voltea y lo obsequia a los pájaros. Y tiene al lado de la mesa, sobre una jardinera, un libro de Virginia Woolf: Flush. Y atiende a los clientes que llegan a pedirle atole y tamales y les regresa su cambio. Y tiene una presencia que calma el aire, que lo llena con la honestidad de su sonrisa, de sus ojos grandes, de su cabello lacio.

II.
Observa. Piensa. Deduce. Infiere. Pregunta. ¿Me compra un mazapán?, interrumpiendo mi lectura. Pero no sólo eso: ¿Le caen mal esas señoras? Volteo a donde se dirige su mirada, del otro lado del vidrio, a la mesa casi contigua a la mía donde toman café y platican dos mujeres. No... ¿lo dices por que crees que hacen ruido? No, no me molesta, no las escucho. Sonreímos y me da las gracias. Después lo veo acercarse a la mesa frente a mí, ofrecer mazapanes a la familia que la ocupa, y después preguntarles ¿Para qué es esto? Señalando una caja blanca de madera adosada a la pared, con la leyenda "Sugerencias". La familia le ofrece sus explicaciones. El niño sonríe, da las gracias, y sale a ofrecer mazapanes a las mesas de afuera.

III.
No lo veo, sólo lo escucho: el sonido que sube desde la esquina de la calle empujado por el aire, deslizándose por el balcón hasta llegar al sillón donde dormito. Una armónica. Y lo imagino tocando.

IV.
Entra con un aire de mucha confianza, cargando un estuche con su guitarra adentro. La miro, porque pienso que también será una comensal, y me sonríe, devolviéndome la mirada, igualmente fija. Después pasan otras cosas, el arroz y las tortillas, y la olvido. Después escucho detrás una voz delgada, con una emoción que no acaba de revelarse por completo, y la música tenue que la acompaña. Y después su voz segura, reaccionando ante la generosidad de una niña pequeña: ¡Gracias hermosa! Y volteo, y nos miramos y sonreímos de nuevo. De ahí en adelante la mantengo en mente, y escucho cómo su voz crece. Cuando se va, sólo veo su espalda llevando su guitarra.

Will time make us wise?

... and I knew the silence of the world

to myself, rather belatedly, but still on time

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

(And yet, I I'm almost certain

that I can hear it again.)

Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

Falling madly (and therefore obsessively) in love with Edna

St. Vincent Millay... isn't she the most perfect Orlando in this picture? 

and so renascently romantic in this one...she would touch a hundred flowers 

and not pick one, 

and watch the wind bow down the grass

and the grass rise

with quiet eyes

and here perhaps thinking: we talk of taxes, and I call you friend; 

well, such you are, but well enough we know

how thick about us root, how rankly grow

those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,

that flourish through neglect, and soon must send

perfume so sweet upon us and overthrow

our steady senses

then perhaps in her mind beginning to seek Her, her other sister, 

her other soul: Grave Silence, lovelier 

than the three loveliest maidens,

whom evermore she follows wistfully, 

wandering Heaven and Earth

and Hell and the four seasons through.

and finally... before ever sweeping floors

or making dishes done,

she shall always be found

a-sunning in the sun!

Interested? Her bio and a few poems here, and a good collection of her work in digital format here.

Variación primera: "Afternoon on a Hill",  de Renascence

Variación segunda: Sonnet I, en Second April

Variación tercera: "Ode to Silence", also in Second April

Variación cuarta: "Portrait by a Neighbor", from A Few Figs from Thistles

Jewels and flowers

You were afraid of the god
sitting there among his jewels
and flowers and precious fabrics
all brightly colored
looking you straight in the eye
from the fake sky
of painted clouds

The god of fortune.
You were afraid of the god of good fortune.


But you also sang songs

(and claimed your right to freeedom
asking if I'd join you)