Roshanak Rodanco

 Last year, when I wrote you my last letter The beginning of my future poetry I acknowledged who you really were for the first time I didn’t call you by any other name I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart That it was evil, and that it convinced me that darkness was real That the devil is a real devil And that monsters don’t always know that they’re monsters But projection is an amazing thing After you left and burnt the house down You tried to convince me that it was I who was holding the matches You told me that I didn’t know who I was, but I do I love rose gardens I plant violets every time someone leaves me I love the great sequoias of yosemite And if you asked my sister to describe The first thing she thinks of when she thinks of me She would say camp fire smoke I’m gentle I’m funny when I’m drunk But I haven’t been drunk for 14 years I go on trips with my friends to the beach who don’t know that I’m crazy I can do that I can do anything Even leave you Becau...

Helena, el mundo está en silencio porque no existes.  Las nubes caminan sobre el campo azul y sus pasos no se escuchan. La lluvia se estrella contra las ventanas sin que su sonido sea percibido.  No existe tu llanto llenando la habitación a media noche. No existe tu risa en el bosque, junto al lago.  Nadie ha de pronunciar nunca tu nombre. Nunca voy a conocer tu olor, nunca voy a acariciarte. El océano vibra desde sus profundidades y escupe su espuma en el litoral pero su rugido ha enmudecido. Apenas fuiste un deseo, una minúscula posibilidad. Apenas fuiste todo lo que me faltó para darme cuenta de que caer al vacío era el primer paso para volar. No hay materia a la cual nombrar o sepultar, por eso dejo evidencia de ti en estas palabras. Todo hubiera sido dado, sólo por ver el mundo a través de tu mirada. No hubo hechizo o pócima para traerte a mis brazos. Incluso el viento ha venido a despeinarme en total sigilo. El mundo calla porque no estas conmigo. Alguien me escribi...

 I have done it again.    One year in every ten    I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin    Bright as a Nazi lampshade,    My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine    Jew linen. Peel off the napkin    O my enemy.    Do I terrify?—— The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?    The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be    At home on me And I a smiling woman.    I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three.    What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments.    The peanut-crunching crowd    Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot—— The big strip tease.    Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands    My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.    The first time it ...

 Bare-handed, I hand the combs. The man in white smiles, bare-handed, Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet, The throats of our wrists brave lilies. He and I Have a thousand clean cells between us, Eight combs of yellow cups, And the hive itself a teacup, White with pink flowers on it, With excessive love I enameled it Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.' Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells Terrify me, they seem so old. What am I buying, wormy mahogany? Is there any queen at all in it? If there is, she is old, Her wings torn shawls, her long body Rubbed of its plush ---- Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful. I stand in a column Of winged, unmiraculous women, Honey-drudgers. I am no drudge Though for years I have eaten dust And dried plates with my dense hair. And seen my strangeness evaporate, Blue dew from dangerous skin. Will they hate me, These women who only scurry, Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover? It is almost over. I am in control. Here is my ...