Translated from the Spanish by Vialcary Crisóstomo Tejada
from Eilyn Lombard has updated her status
March 4, 2013
you cry Cuba
and I reply Enter
disparate/ethereal/third
untangled skein for the next trip
and you recount
before the beer
the tender/painful story that I can’t find in your
profile
gardener’s hands
my grandfather never had hands like those
or wore long shirts and a hat
I would have liked
to go with my grandfather to the garden where he worked
but my grandfather didn’t have a garden
that would tear my hands apart
to smell the earth
to walk among flowers
so I just return to your cry
and I reply Enter
to find your hands holding a book
scratching mine.
December 26, 2012
I’ve searched through all my wounds
but this
hurt
invades my cavities
red, burning
with poignant irons
with water and white dye
aorta
dethroned
the bad is gone
to save me they’ve torn out the aorta
the burning bone
beautiful until today
the pain of silence
the silence of an empty
stomach
small hands pain
moving pieces of iron in my mouth
my almost virgin
mouth
I’ve been wounded
July 28, 2012
I can be the island
the island woman who lets herself be kissed by all the waters
the circle woman at last
I search for a voice
bloody
(shattered winds, cords, sails)
Voice that the ocean returns
and in the island
resist against the trees,
pecked,
broken against the walls.
island of circular shadows
I mean to return
slit the skin in memory of death
enjoy my fingers inside
bite the edge of warm howls
(break, woman, the restraints…)
I search for a voice
circular flashes in the deeps of my pain
and I could be island shadows,
a paper rose on the right shoulder,
pink and of paper
defying the faith clumsily glue to the left
this voice
hollow voice of the silence island sober
sinks its fingers into my shoulder
I look
and there is a green bird where before roses
a green bird
on my shoulder
quietly waiting for me to become a circle
ultimate island
circular silent
Eilyn Lombard is the mother of Alejandra and Reina Lucía. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Literature, Culture and Language at the University of Connecticut where she investigates Latin American and Caribbean poetry. She has published several poetry collections including: Las tierras rojas (2019), Todas las diosas fatigadas (2011), and Suelen ser frágiles las muchachas sobre el puente (2005). Her collection Bienvenidos a Facebook is forthcoming by Editorial Letras Cubanas.
Vialcary Crisóstomo Tejada is an Assistant Professor of Caribbean and Latinx literature at Earlham College. Her research focuses on constructions of race and gender in the Hispanic Caribbean and its diasporas in the US. She has published articles in various magazines in Latin America and the US She is currently working on her first book Subversiones feministas en la República Dominicana Postrujillista and in the translation of the collection of poems Bienvenidos a Facebook (Eilyn Lombard has updated her status).
World Poetry Review 