Piedras de sal
A Wendy L.
Guarda la aguja, los hilos,
no aprendimos el arte del zurcido invisible. Un manto de cicatrices levanta sobre la arena.
Habrá que zarpar de nuevo con otras velas para este barco, sin islas que recuerden a Ítaca, aguas
con ballenas menos blancas. Habrá que construir un mar.
Levanta el ancla, arde la casa, rema conmigo.
No pasemos con tristeza esta llanura, no crucemos la mirada sobre el hombro.
Salt Stones
To Wendy L.
Store the needles, the thread,
we did not learn the art of invisible mending. A mantle of scars raises itself from the sand.
We must set sail again
with new sails for this ship,
without islands that reminds us of Ithaca, waters
with fewer white whales. We must build a sea.
Raise the anchor, home is burning, row with me.
Let us not cross this plain with sadness, let us not look over our shoulder.
Polaris
Lo que perdimos persiste, joyas entregadas al polvo,
perfumes de una acústica lejana.
Lo que ganamos persiste: piedra imantada, casas con la arcilla de nuestros cuerpos.
Sobre nosotros otra lengua, anuncios ilegibles para los viajeros.
Polaris
What we lost persists, jewels given over to dust,
perfumes from a distant acoustic.
What we won persists: magnetized stone, houses bathed in the clay of our bodies.
Above us another language, illegible signs for the travelers.
Jack Kerouac no me engañó
El país de Kerouac no existe. No son lo mismo las autopistas.
Hacer dedo en la carretera puede significar aparecer en el cartelito de desaparecidos de Walmart. Kerouac me mintió, me vendió un espejismo.
Yo vine de Carolina del Norte en carro y lo único que vi fueron pinos. Nada de músicos y ni sombra del bayou; un país enorme, salvaje.
Pinos y un ciervo. Fue como ver un unicornio.
Cuando entramos a La Florida se acabaron los pinos y empezaron las palmeras.
Uno confía demasiado en los escritores y yo, a Kerouac, además, le hubiera hecho pestañitas. Su país se perdió, a lo mejor habría que poner un cartelito en Walmart: Make America Exist Again.
Luego prendo las noticias y he aquí a un policía que mató a un hombre negro. Al carajo el letrerito de las guaguas, tan lindo, dedicado a Rosa Parks. He aquí a los mexicanos, “los Pedros y Panchos del estúpido saber popular americano”, acusados de violadores; los viejos, que ya no sirven a nadie. Las mujeres indígenas no son contabilizadas en las listas de desaparecidos. No aparecen ni siquiera en los cartelitos de Walmart. He aquí la rueda del odio.
No son lo mismo las autopistas, están llenas de carros que van a millón. A nadie le importa nadie.
Pero el Hudson sigue con chimeneas enormes ocultas en la bruma, en el humo que arrojan sobre Manhattan y en Oklahoma un campesino siega la gavilla. Hoy la estrella de la tarde se pondrá nuevamente sobre la pradera.
Jack Kerouac no me engañó.
Jack Kerouac Didn’t Lie to Me
Kerouac’s country no longer exists. The highways aren’t the same.
Hitchhikingmay put you on Walmart’s missing people’s list. Kerouac lied to me, he sold me an illusion.
I came from North Carolina by car and the only thing I saw were pine trees. No musicians, not even the bayou; a huge wild country.
Pine trees and a single deer. It was like seeing a unicorn.
When we entered Florida, the pines were gone, and palms began.
One trusts writers too much and I would have flirted with Kerouac. His country is missing, maybe we should put a sign up in Walmart: Make America Exist Again.
Then I turn on the news and here is a cop who killed a black man. Fuck the pretty sign on the buses, dedicated to Rosa Parks. Here are the Mexicans, “the Pedros and Panchos of stupid civilized American lore”, accused of raping; the elderly, useless to everyone. Native American women are not counted on the lists of missing persons. They’re not even on the bulletin board at Walmart. This is the wheel of hate.
The highways aren’t the same, they are full of speeding cars; no one cares
about anyone.
But the Hudson is still there with giant chimneys shrouded in mist, in the smoke they blow over Manhattan and a farmer is harvesting grain in Oklahoma. Today the evening star will descend again upon the prairie.
Kerouac didn’t lie to me.
Del poemario bilingüe Zugunruhe publicado por katakana editores (2020)
© All rights reserved Kelly Martínez Grandal
© All rights reserved for the translation Margaret Randall
Kelly Martínez-Grandal (La Habana, 1980). Es Licenciada en Artes y Magister en Literatura Comparada, ambos títulos otorgados por la Universidad Central de Venezuela, país donde vivió por veinte años. En esta misma institución fue profesora por siete años, dictando cursos que abarcaban temas como la sociología del arte y la crítica literaria. Por más de diez años se ha dedicado también al trabajo editorial.
Sus poemas han sido incluidos en varias antologías: 102 poetas en Jamming (OT Editores, Caracas, 2014), 100 mujeres contra la violencia doméstica (Fundavag Ediciones, Caracas, 2015) y Aquí [Ellas] en Miami (Katakana Editores, 2018), entre otras, así como en revistas digitales: Literal Magazine, Revue Fracas, Emma Gunst, Nagari Magazine y Suburbano. En el 2017 publicó su primer libro, Medulla Oblongata (CAAW Ediciones, Miami). Actualmente vive y trabaja en Miami.
Margaret Randall Poet, feminist, photographer, oral historian, and social activist Margaret Randall was born in New York City and grew up in New Mexico. Returning to New York in the 1950s, she was associated with both the abstract expressionists and the Beats. She moved to Mexico City in the 1960s, where she cofounded and coedited the bilingual literary journal El Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn. Randall took an active part in the Mexican student movement of 1968 and was forced to flee the country, traveling first to Prague and then to Cuba, where she lived for 11 years with her partner and four children. Randall wrote about those experiences in her memoir To Change the World: My Years in Cuba (2009). In an interview with Laura Ruiz Montes coinciding with the Cuban publication of the book, Randall summed up her years in 1970s Cuba: “Cuba took us in as it took in so many in those years. We chose to live as much as possible as Cubans did, and little by little learned about life in a revolutionary society, with all its benefits and problems. The experience gave me a great deal: the idea that ‘another world is possible.’ It also taught us firsthand about the difficulties inherent in making such dramatic systemic change.”
In 1980, Randall moved to Nicaragua, where she lived during the years of the Sandinistas. Many of her books are attempts to understand how socialist revolutionary societies intersect, or fail to intersect, with feminism: Cuban Women Now: Interview with Cuban Women (1974), Sandino’s Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle (1981), Sandino’s Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua (1994), and Gathering Rage: The Failure of 20th Century Revolutions to Develop a Feminist Agenda (1992). She is the author of more than 90 books of poetry, prose, oral testimony, and memoir, including, recently, Che on My Mind (2014), a feminist reflection on the life and legacy of Che Guevara; More Than Things (2014), a collection of personal essays; and Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression (2015). Randall’s recent collections of poetry include Ruins (2011), The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones (2013), and About Little Charlie Lindbergh (2014). She also edited the anthology Only the Road/Solo El Camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry (2016).
In 1984, Randall returned to the United States, only to face deportation under the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952; her writings were declared “against the good order and happiness of the United States.” After a five-year legal battle, Randall won her case. She received a Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett grant for writers victimized by political repression and a PEN New Mexico Dorothy Doyle Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing and Human Rights Activism. Her photographs are in the Capitol Art Foundation’s permanent collection, and Randall herself is the subject of a documentary by Lu Lippold and Pam Colby, The Unapologetic Life of Margaret Randall.
Randall lives with her wife, the painter Barbara Byers, in New Mexico.
