[ Translator's note: What follows is a selection of passages from E1 Mono Gramatico (literally, "The Monkey Grammarian," but not to be taken literally: to be taken freely, calling up all the puns, associations, analogies that flood our minds when we juggle mono, mono, gram-, grammar, grammarian of monads, monkish keys, graminivorous appetite for semantics…
Las puertas del año se abren, como las del lenguaje, hacia lo desconocido. Anoche me dijiste: mañana habrá que trazar unos signos, dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama sobre la doble página del papel y del día. Mañana habrá que inventar, de nuevo, la realidad de este mundo. Ya tarde abrí los ojos. Por el…
Who shares your room, I wish I knew. A centipede, with eyes of blue? She will not see me snooping here To count each slipper, boot and shoe. Our little dresser must think it queer To hold her panties pink and sheer. I’ll bet her ass will never quake The coldest evenings of the year….
(In memory of Victor Jara) No! white bird you’re no dove, no sign, you are an albino pigeon shitting on skyscrapers, citizens, monuments; you’ll never sing to me of lemonade & hard cider.* They broke both his hands bone after bone after bone that, swallows once, filttered over quick strings to start the children singing;…
Diamonds are forever so I gave you quartz which is #7 on the hardness scale and it’s hard enough to get to know anybody these days if only to scratch the surface and quartz will scratch six other mineral surfaces: it will scratch glass it will scratch gold it will even scratch your eyes out…
Inside a tin can atop my stove with long necks and empty stares but with so much character ingrained: my wooden spoons. Honest stirrers of soup no one remembers buying you and yet you are here so effortlessly shaped I imagine wood thrown to the sea floating back—perfect— after many years. Inside the bright tin…
In the fierce peak of the day it’s quietly they wade With spread arms into the blue breakers rushing white And swim seemingly with no tension, the arms Curved, the head’s gestures circular and slow. They walk dripping back into the air Of nineteen-fifty-five smiling downward from the glare As if modestly, as they move…
The meander of my walking, and through it A sun that swings to go with me at each turn, And sweet fatigue that remains childlike because It works at nothing. Push aggressively enough at the stout weave Of what is, appearances we must take as Being what they seem, and you start to tear through,…
Among polite giraffes swaying their long necks innocent of their loveliness, among cavalier hippoes who yawn through the afternoon, among properly misbehaved monkeys flying from tree to tree, among the dogs and cats of this neighborhood perfectly at ease secure in their niches, I stumble: the half step in the great chain. If I seem…
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