by Daisy Zamora (Nicaragua)
translated by Margaret Randall

I

My words won’t reach you. They will be intercepted, twisted,
distorted so they’ll shatter silently, and you won’t be able to hear
them. I know all too well now that you’re elderly and fragile you
are no longer that figure unbowed before the lie intimidating the
amphibians of murky waters by brandishing truth like a flag of
purity. How sorry I am, Father, not to be at your side as I was
back then, now that they say you are sweeter of temperament and
your adversaries invade your home as if it were theirs, trying to
cheat you of what’s left. How they harass you, believing you as
defenseless as a small animal, a lamb prepared for the feast. And
you, allowing them to tear you apart because you are in your
galaxy, have left all that behind and it no longer matters that each
of them grabs a piece.

II

But now you’re dead. Such relief in the mob eager to heap its
scorn upon you. On their false Olympus of power, they croak
your name, praise you and are smug with false gratitude. Now
that they believe you dead, they can steal the words that
frightened them and use them as if they are their own. And no
one will notice their subterfuge. They live in fraud and by fraud,
say whatever and Nothing. They are masters of Nothing, that
from which they come and to which they will return, while you
ascend to your galaxy and your word, alive among us, scattered
over Earth and flying to the Universe where you embrace God.

III

Free now of the siege and its bullies, you become yourself once
again. What power in your words, the last you uttered, speaking
truth to lies. From your star you will have seen the fury spewed by
her of the sterile forest. Her rabid hordes fail to strangle your
death. Your ashes are the soil of Nicaragua now and the earth of
Solentiname is sacred. Pilgrims will come from everywhere to
honor you in your sanctuary. And those who continue to
persecute you in the grave will be mere putrefied rot. Sleep
soundly, Father. Love will win.

San Francisco, August 12, 2019 / March 6, 2020.

Daisy Zamora (Nicaragua)
translated by Margaret Randall

When I see them go by, I sometimes ask myself: what
must they feel, those women who decided to be perfect,
to preserve their marriages at any cost no matter how
their husbands turned out (party–animal, womanizer,
gambler, always looking for a fight, loudmouth, violent,
madman, deviant, perhaps abnormal, neurotic, bully,
completely unbearable, ignorant, deadly, boring, brute,
insensitive, slovenly, egomaniac, only out for himself,
disloyal, cheat, thief, traitor, liar, raping their daughters,
torturing their sons, king of the house, tyrant everywhere)
but they endure it all and only God above knows what
they suffer.

When I see them go by, slowed and dignified, their sons
and daughters long gone, alone in the house with that man
they once loved (perhaps he is calmer now, doesn’t drink,
barely talks, just sits in front of the television, shuffles
around in his slippers, yawns, sleeps, snores, gets up early,
is ailing, half–blind, harmless, almost childlike) I ask myself:

Do they dare imagine themselves, one night, guiltless widows
dreaming they are free at last and coming back to life?

by Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua)
translated by Alba Stacey Hawkins

Outside,
night lurks,
like a tiger crouching
to leap through the window.
In this room where
hard at work
I pull words from the air,
I am amazed by the sudden desire
for a soft
kiss
on my leg.

There is no one here.
My body is here alone
while I am with them
silent witnesses
women my fingers know
as they enter at night
with the breath of the moon.

Women of the ages
inhabit me:
Isadora dancing in her tunic.
Virginia Woolf in a room of her own.
Sappho leaping from the rock.
Medea. Phaedra. Jane Eyre
and my friends,
refusing to fade over time,
writing themselves
coming out of the shadows showing their profiles
finally seeing themselves
free of all constraint.

Women dance in the lamplight.
They climb onto tables. They give incendiary speeches.
They besiege me with suffering. Marks on their bodies.
Childbirth.
Silence of warm kitchens.
Ephemeral, tense bedrooms.

Towering women.
Monumental women surround me.
They recite their poems. They sing. They dance.
They reclaim their voice.
They say: “I could never study Latin. I could never write like
Shakespeare.
No one supported my love of music.”
George Sand: “I had to disguise myself as a man.
I wrote hidden in a male name.”
And before that, Jane Austen
composing the words to “Pride and Prejudice”
in a notebook, in the church’s vestibule,
repeatedly interrupted by visitors.

Women of the ages,
solemn
mature
gentle
whose shimmering eyes
envelop me
mortal immortals
in their unearthly bodies,
they seem to take pleasure
observing this room of my own,
the unused ream of white pages,
the modern word processor,
bookcases,
dictionaries.

I glance over at the linen closet,
my silky lingerie on the dresser.
I notice the shopping list on the nightstand.

I still feel the desire
for a soft
kiss
on my leg.

Nancy Morejón (Cuba)
translated by Margaret Randall

What we fall in love with are her black hands
like ferocious horseflies
illuminating the Apostle’s temples
as she drapes his shoulders
in the buzz of proud palms.
Paulina Pedroso possesses a noble soul.

A gentle breeze passes, unsettling the sky,
light falls across the border
and the gesture relieves Jos  Mart ’s pain.
I would like to have been there: the gallop, the swamp,
on horseback and with a straw hat
but her gaze moves over that marine dusk
that comes in from the small cays,
almost all of them the size of Paulina Pedroso’s hands
in brilliant archipelago.

Paulina Pedroso,
black woman of gold who professes her independence
when she clasps the man of The Golden Age to her breast
while the bells of the brasses and a drum
sound in the ears of her husband Ruperto
as if the young anthem
of Pinar del Rio’s tranquil mountains
and the sublime edges of Tampa . . . in springtime.

Paulina Pedroso possesses the noble soul of the islands.