^{translated from the Spanish by Mark Schafer}

now I’m in a landscape full of mockingbirds
I get closer and closer 
when I claim that vastness
I’ll barely have the strength to wake in the brevity of death
the light strikes the air
we’re in the place where the colors open
the days are long and clench like migraines
and everything repeats
the trees casting off
the night dissolving
and then?
nothing is true but the reflection of the dream I’m trying to shatter
and which I don’t even dare to dream
constant plagiarism of myself
and time is the only meeting place
it’s all nothing but time
there where a few sprigs of bougainvillea in a glass of water
suffice to make us a garden
because we die alone
and death is just the awakening
from this first dream of living
and my grandmother said as we left the movies
dream that the dream of life is beautiful my child
the candles’ glow grows rusty
and I where am I?
I’m who I always was
the surprise of being
I come to where everything starts the beginning of the beginning
this is the time
the time for waking up
my grandmother lights the Shabbos candles from her death and looks at me
Shabbat lengthens into never into after into before
my grandmother who died of dreams
endlessly rocks the dream that invents her
which I invent 
a wild girl looks at me from inside

I am whole

From “Migraciones”

ahora estoy en un paisaje de cenzontles
cada vez estoy más cerca

cuando posea esa inmensidad
apenas tendré fuerza para despertar en la brevedad de la muerte

la luz golpea el aire
estamos donde los colores se abren
son días largos y apretados como la migraña
y todo se repite
los árboles desamarrándose
la noche deshaciéndose
¿y después?
lo único verdadero es el reflejo del sueño que trato de fracturar

y que ni siquiera me atrevo a soñar
continuo plagio de mí misma
y el lugar del encuentro es sólo tiempo
todo no es sino tiempo
allá donde unas cuantas buganvilias en un vaso de agua
bastan para hacernos un jardín
porque morimos solos
y la muerte es apenas el despertar
de este sueño primero de vivir
y dijo mi abuela a la salida del cine
sueña que es hermoso el sueño de la vida muchacha
se oxida la lumbre de las veladoras
y yo ¿dónde estoy?
soy la que fui siempre
lo inesperado de estar siendo
llego al lugar del principio donde comienza el comienzo
éste es el tiempo
es el tiempo de despertar
la abuela enciende las velas sabáticas desde su muerte y me mira

se extiende el sábado hasta nunca hasta después hasta antes
mi abuela que murió de sueños
mece interminablemente el sueño que la inventa
que yo invento
una niña loca me mira desde adentro

estoy intacta

When Mama died, I lost my air. Hit with an anvil of grief. 
In dreams, the rains came. Streets filled with sorrow. 
I’m standing with Thomas at the bridge edge seeking relief. 

The sound of her voice is fleeting. Time is a thief— 
she will never return to me. Thomas says not to follow 
his lead. Don’t hold onto it. It’s heavy. This anvil of grief. 

Without funerary activities, they say, you live in constant disbelief 
your loved one is gone. You seek the Light, if only for a moment, to borrow 
so you don’t follow Thomas to the bridge edge, seeking relief. 

I focus what little energy I have on the children. My chief 
concern. When I’m clear-eyed, I know I’m one of God’s sparrows— 
yes. Mama’s dead. But He will lift the weight of my anvil of grief. 

A flood of sadness fills my days. Is this the end? It is my belief 
Mama’s spirit is heaven-bound, her earthly body is hollow— 
there’s no use running graveside, dragging Thomas, seeking relief. 

Now I know the ways of Thomas’s moods, flitting like a leaf 
in the fall breeze. Grounded. Far away. Grounded. With Thomas, tomorrow’s 
tasks: Kiss our children. Tell them we love them. Lift off our chests the anvil of grief— 
it’s no use if we both run to the Bay bridge’s edge, seeking relief.

I burned my life, that I might find 
A passion wholly of the mind, 
Thought divorced from eye and bone, 
Ecstasy come to breath alone. 
I broke my life, to seek relief 
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire 
Charred existence and desire. 
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.

my girlfriend drives us south. There’s a smear
of hot pink on the asphalt. From the passenger’s seat
I twist my head back. Did you see that? Only a flash,
until a few miles later. Again, then again, then a whole

velvet deer burst on the shoulder, and now everything is pink.
She stares ahead and holds my hand. She has asked
me not to notice these things, but I am a glutton
for how quickly the body becomes something different.

Before we met, I imagined a wedding like this. But— 
not this. She stood with the other bridesmaids in champagne.
I followed their husbands, snuck away for hot wings with them
between the ceremony and reception. It was so strange.

The bride was so beautiful. Her family, so kind. The chicken?
The most delicious I have ever eaten, and that made it all
worse, as I jostled with the husbands over the succulent drumsticks,
startled by the unexpected ease of flesh sundered from bone.

Now, there’s a light rain. She stares ahead. The grey, the pink,
her hand—will we always unknow each other in this way?
I want the whole carcass. I want to roam the caverns of her body,
loving her like an animal howling its own name.