In this collection the reader will find poems from different writers who are based in the United States of America. These poets shared their powerful writing pieces with us and, later on, they were asked to define womanhood in one word. The chosen words were remarkable and a reflection of their nature and their experiences as women: Persistence, Antigone, Courage, Topographies of Light and Shadows, Transformation, Bravery and Water. None of them used the same word to define it. These words could be used as a map and a cartography of the women of the twentieth first century. Being a woman also means to write as a woman. At La Ninfa Eco we invite our readers to celebrate the accomplishments of the female writers of the United States of America*.
Marj Hogan: Persistence
Drywall
In the scene where the hero chases our assassin through
[the marketplace,
oranges fall all over, a chicken explodes into the air
[left of center, and my mother
whispers, “Who is going to clean that up?” This was a
[running joke
at our house: if in a film things fell apart, she would
[suck her teeth and we
could echo under our breath the inevitable
[lament, Who…? in unison, because
someone not particularly concerned with the conspiracy
[or the car chase
had only come to sell eggs, which become one more
[casualty of the hero’s ego
when a tent comes crashing down and the vendor gestures
[uselessly after
our assassin; or when elsewhere the cowboy shoves a
[gunslinger through
the plate glass window of the saloon, then rides away
[without so much as
picking up a broom; or the doomed lover who topples the
[bookcase; or the rogue
but righteous soldier in a Land Rover; the joke being
[simply that he can,
that after the action he’s gone, and someone else in
[amazement or disgust
is gathering the bruised fruit, the sawdust, the shards
[of glass, the broken cups,
like when a man punches a hole in your drywall, and you
[think: Hey, not
necessary; and also, I feel you, man; and also, Who is
[going to clean that up?
Carolina Sánchez: Antigone Genealogy I foresee the bird dressed in black, it was my grandmother arriving from distant lands where solitude was a way of living. I foresee my grandmother bird landing in this moor orphan, foreigner, with sharpened silence, rigid stance under the Elizabethan collar. Austere, like a Protestant’s home in the country, aseptic and cruel. My grandmother realized early, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t think; not allowed. She served her sentence, knowing the only thing allowed was to die. The bird carrying bad luck my grandmother was still stares the word with fright through my eyes.
Kelly Martínez-Grandal: Courage Fragile paper doll cut from the edge of dream, shredded the eye the terror. You have not chosen this destiny. Within you the sky’s shadow Where we could not see one another, exhausted hours, the afternoon and a desire to discover all of you covered the mouth, the hands. Swaying naked, body overcomed by years, birds where you did not say, white wound. No more violence giving birth to these lines, humiliating rage at not being you, veins glimpsed at the edge of a mirror where the shudder begins. From Medulla Oblongata. Translated by Margaret Randall.
Sarli E. Mercado: Topographies of light and shadows
On the road to the red sea
But now all these heavy books are no use to me anymore,
[for
Where I go, words carry no weight: it is best
W.H. Auden
To E. M. Nash
The road will take you there, perhaps to me, she said
There, at the beginning, a single fragile geography
[it’s all you’ll find
I’d listen in to the silent dissolution of the sea
It will awaken you into the Unknown City
I live now in exile from it! I am mad for it!
Look now at that red dusty street lined with all those
[wooden houses (don't forget to mark yours
with your name)
Yours, you’ll see it right behind the small white
[Church. You do see it…!
It’s indeed the beginning of shy humiliations and sunny
[afternoons
In it, the skinny white dog, Suliman, lays still under
[your bed
Waiting.
It won’t be too far now:
There! Look now at the great mango tree as your brother
[falls ripe
Just don’t look into the water well (his face floats in
[it deeply at times)
I too dislike it! I’d too run from it
Better get back out to the street, she adds
You and I, we’ll walk together the road to the sea!
Is far too bright out here, I want to say, my skin
[slowly sweating
Yet, it hardly matters now as I follow the clumsy
[childish feet into the distance
Look, here I too stand now staring, it’s my bleeding
[leg, she screams out
The wound marks the flesh and I don’t want to cry. I,
[don’t… I?
The red runs dark and deep… deep into the red ground
[from the flesh.
Look at it!
(Afterwards, they, we, all cried too. Waspan, San
[Esquipulas, Krasa, …Asang
All of them did, making us carve our own graves deep,
[deep into the red ground. Perhaps… they
did it because it was right on Christmas? Red Christmas,
[we are, we were. Right? Right?)
The scarred rogue sorrow comes quietly in the
[small hour
It is fine, her voice hardly there now, it’s only the
[dusty road that pains yours eyes
Here, come close and embrace me
Softly smelling both sides of my saggy face, as if it
[were for the first time
Here, she whispered, come close embrace me, don’t kiss
[me, no…
This is how she, our grandmother, greeted us; this was
[our way!
I wipe my tears and feel the warm sand, my feet wet,
[salty
Red.
Masiel M. Corona Santos: Transformation
TO BE BORN A WOMAN
To be born a woman is a revolutionary act;
It is to emerge out of silence,
it is to break echoed patterns that bound us to
[tradition.
We as women of today,
must learn and have learned
to shatter crystallized essences
of a historical gap that deviate our struggles.
To be born a woman is to ignite,
to ignite collective voices,
become loaded cartilleras:
sources of an open expression,
empowerment.
We have a duty to ourselves,
but also to the others.
We must hold each other
as hermanas.
Sisters,
alive we have moved through real struggles,
freeing ourselves from the confines and conditions of
[history,
bitter ends.
We say no.
We rewrite ourselves and by doing so,
we change,
we change
we change.
Roots of an evolving psyche we are.
Long forgotten, we create a voice,
a voice that emerges out of silence.
To be born a woman is a revolutionary act.
Yarisa Colón Torres: Bravery The Trio: Billie Holiday, Harriet Tubman and Nina [Simone This scaffolding of bones never forgets to quiet down the ant’s nest on my forehead it thunders among the deceitful tongues and fixes broken crowns my root comes from afar and is in good company to my right walks a voice that smells like gardenias to my left a maroon from the underground railroad is leading quivering voices behind me a pianist in exile masters the art of improvisation facing forward among dead women I become a woman rowing on wavering feet I color shadows I sing and I spy on the light Translated by Mario Cancel Bigay
Silvia Goldman: Water
the lesson of grief
A woman dries up
from the inside out
Mary Hawley
this is the lesson of grief
a woman dries up from the inside out
she is not another rib she is the table where someone
[set the plates
the floor is outside but from the corner
it is a lamp falling
disturbing the balance
random
a vowel appears and she grabs it
her hand is too much
within that purity
it has a finger that flows toward her feet
fills them and says to them
i am also going to touch you
even though it hurts
she puts shoulders on the plates
men who head for bookshelves but get lost first
reading isn’t enough
it doesn’t forgive you
there are enormous ways to read
give me your hard part your father part
that water you put on the plate
and it fell
what’s below isn’t a tongue
nor is it the slow yearning of gray
it is a cry that splits your flesh in two
we are on the bridges of this conversation
you’ll look at me one more time before i jump
Translated by Mary Hawley
*Coordinated by Enrique Bernales Albites, edited by Gaby Sambuccetti
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