by Carlos Maria Gutiérrez (Uruguay)
translated by Margaret Randall

Bored impatient with nothing to do
in a country where nothing happens
death gives the roulette wheel a spin
catches chance’s little ball
and sings zero to unanimous astonishment

the teletypes crackle
the Hemisphere sends condolences
and five regiments are put on call

half the founders are in mourning
the other half quietly keeps score

fortified by their surnames
while everything is explained to them
and they apply their makeup
a small faceless man waits
an ex–gymnast overweight now

sometime–sparring partner sometime–masseuse
sweats anxiously his belly exposed
no time to buy him a decent suit
only to cover his embarrassment
with the blue and white of the presidential sash

go on, someone orders,
retransmit via satellite

then the bright floodlight
a dark stench of dead flowers
and brass bands accompany the other
repentant corpse too late
cannons and speeches sound
the jobless file out one door
while a profusion of masks enters through another

asexual clowns, prophets, cooks, fortunetellers
all hawk spare parts
and the boxer candidate
tries on his great governing gloves

note: consult fight description
in another section of this same edition
police page
and death notices

last round
the referee misjudges
the police detain him

where is the adversary
what this armed shadow
this sudden ferocious fist
aimed where the blow is least expected

the ex–presidential boxer
begins to experience shortness of breath
caused by the state of siege
he’s against the ropes now
his mouth guard has fallen out
a jungle of legs traps him
he can’t connect in this sea of faces
students shot in the back
workers dead of grief in a prison camp
precincts crowded with castrated innocents
all of them in their shrouds
climb into the ring
and their scores are noted on unauthorized cards

the presidential boxer is an imposter
under the brilliant light
his sash is drenched in spit and blood
he listens for the bell
but nothing rings
he sweats and trembles

but no one comes with the sponge
he grabs his cramping belly
enters into one final clench with himself

there is an odor of dead flowers
and five regiments are on call
death is bored
he holds his nose
with his yellow hand
and with his red one
spins the wheel once more

in the inscrutable stands
no one claps or whistles

kneeling as if in a dream
the semi–conscious presidential boxer
hears the monotonous countdown
someone sends him in English via satellite

— from Diario del cuartel, 1970

by Claudia Guerra Castillo (Zapoteco, Mexico)
translated by Margaret Randall

The House of Drunks
with love for you, Cintia

Bartender . . .
— Give me a glass of your honey
— Sit down, I invite you to dress in silence,
and get loneliness drunk — our loneliness —
pretend there’s no pain, that it’s what you expected.
Come kiss this night’s lips.
No one will reveal our name,
we are two thirsty souls.
— I want to love, to drink the last drops
of your drunken breasts,
cheers.
Here’s to you!
Here,
only drunken words commit suicide . . .
from Insurrección de las palabras, 2018.

Stephanie Borges (Brazil)
translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin

Imagine being more
than your body
the reading
of fingerprints, irises, traces
textures, not the soul
but to be the body’s refusal
to inhabit its cells
each flow and not be
your name zip code address
stop worrying
about proving you exist
and invent lives
since they don’t even see you as
a person

Imagine being the snake
that when shedding its skin
grows wings
and it wasn’t God
who provide them
so there’s no interest in
reaching heaven, but in flying
low, close to the sea
biting your own tail
being invisible
to radar, barely leaving
traces of feathers and skin
without worrying about
returning to dust.

Imagine time’s spiral
that the past is now
and the worst that can happen
is nothing
and we’re already here
in this desert so
any leap is movement
grow roots, duck–dive a save
slide into a hole
dig a tunnel
for the way is through
and alive and no one knows
how to get there
only maybe being another
with each step
so do it.

by Jorgenrique Adoum (Ecuador)
translated by Katherine M. Hedeen & Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

The chance encounter of a sewing machine
and an umbrella on an operating table
or clocks with eyes.
So you thought
the incredible had to be thoughtup.
But then you hadn’t been
in my country, in my countries, never knew
what happens in its landscape of colors
in cholera, for example a spurred
boot and a priest hat
on top of a cadaver, an Indian
to be precise, as if his history lice,
hailmary beads
weren’t enough? Oh mad symmetry of uniforms
in the humble dictatorship of the dead,
and the American everyday is so well known
we die it by heart too,
and hunger is so identical to old age
when it starts to undress us on the inside,
and there are important teeth biting
our earth, and the Virgin in a cap and leggings.
That’s like that, it’s like that, it’s like that more than what, more
America in the oblivion bodegas, more
echo bouncing back to the screamdoor,
searching out the guilt for us like a snake.
What did you know then if not these vignettes,
if not this atrocious crime carddeck,
not how you’d come up with nothing like the
dead man who died without saying a word, crying
the maggots he had left ever since
they’d given him a break from his killing.
But this is no painting or word
welldone: it happens, nothing more, after
mass, after Independence and other
longlasting tunes. But the blood,
not the cries, now has the word,
and better to laugh at the last of so much.