by Jean Jacques Pierre-Paul (Haiti)
translated by Margaret Randall

Nobody wants to be the victim of their own destiny
Nobody wants
to get up each day
with the world’s scars on their forehead
They killed you, Joane Florvil,
every day
everywhere

When they murdered you in Africa
they said it was tradition
When they murdered you in the United States
it was self–defense
They murdered you in Chile
because you were a bad mother

The truth is everyone profits from your death
They pay some to accuse you
others to arrest you
others to place your death notice in the media

A small group of the outraged
try to keep you in collective memory
but it’s useless to cry pronouncing your name
or asking your forgiveness
How can we live with such immorality?
How can we live in a city without poetry
or mirrors, without embraces, without Joane Florvil?

I am one of the cowards
who didn’t understand you, defend you
All that is left for me now is to cry
as I write this poem
to tell you I am ashamed
to belong to the species that killed you
In a city filled with pretentious cowards

we might have loved you
might have created
a beautiful bird’s nest from your gaze

(Life is the beauty of existence)

You didn’t have enough spring times
to count all the stones we hurled at you
You didn’t live to understand the Chilean dream
We all murdered you Joane Florvil
because your eyes were the wrong color
your accent isn’t English, French or from Berlin
Now we don’t know what to tell your daughter

We murdered you because it is dangerous to be Joane Florvil
at election time
but you could teach us something
Your brief journey left a lesson
we will soon forget:
The only thing worth loving is one human being
different from all others

Living isn’t urgent
Loving is

by Livia Natalia (Brazil)
translated by Tiffany Higgins

In a time of departed men
no crossing is possible
and Odysseus only skirts the edges
of the fleshy navel.

In a time of departed men
an immense tapestry is woven
recording the death of 54 million Brazilians — alive.

In a time of departed men
the foxes guard the sweet grapes
and the sirens don’t sing to drive any sailors crazy.

The days pass heavily, narrating the time of dreams
we fear the oblique bodies of the departed men
but our feet devour the streets and shoot life
against the silence:

captured in an immense tower of 180 floods
a woman hopes with all her might
for the long march of departed men
to pass.

Livia Natalia (Brazil)
translated by Tiffany Higgins

The dead one’s body
has an indecisive presence
that keeps grinding the world around it
with teeth that roar.

The dead body devours
the remains of the world

as if it were biting an apple
removing from it
the fine granule of each delay.

The corpse, passing by
carried like a resuscitated child

bears in its hands
crossed over its stomach
the clear sign
of its fruitless hunger.

by Mardonio Carballo (Nahuatl, Mexico)
translated by Margaret Randall

I still remember the day you were born
Now they tell me no one knows where you are
Yesterday I got a telephone call
And today they sent me part of your ear
And they tell me to be strong
I shouldn’t cry
What can I do?
(Grieve)