When it is March
When fuzz covers
When blood comes close
They will purify your womb
Pour milk and honey under your tongue
You will have taken the first step
Initiated your menses.
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
And I was given this prayer
to be said only
during the hours of bleeding:
I learn from menses
Forge my contiguity with the Moon
From the ubiquitous Earth
I draw my strength
I know month to month
there is a child who dreams me.
Translated by Susan Sherman
I
God drew up some sketches of woman:
full‑face and ivory, I
of berries, silhouetted, I.
Dubious.
Damned choices!
II
Disavowal of fuzz on the pubis
I
tyrant of my woodland flora
will summon up peaches.
III
I feared my breasts,
so hung them up next to my blood
Look at them:
They are fruits of the pine.
IV
I have apprehended the when of my skin.
diving into dizzying waters
Deep riverbed
a roaring, perhaps.
Lengthy course ahead,
already from a lucid kindergarten
I come forth.
V
Listening for my body's sounds, they prod me.
And how!
I am an orange tree
all decked out in suns.
I offer solutions:
It was chance
or blossoms.
VI
Leaning on the deftness of my blood
as on an August day
I rehearse my rising
Weightless ascent
of estrogen, I!
Translated by Elizabeth Córdova
Varios spirits reside in me,
many bodies inhabit me.
There are those who call me: abyss
Others claim parity.
See the house of my body
See the body of my house with ample
doors and windows;
roof, eaves, shawl,
nest or hammock;
House, hostel, or cave,
labial or lancet house
For four hundred children
a lodge, a shelter
Spirit, desire
and doubt populate me
I must add:
estrogen and warm moods
balance the bittersweet
of my inner rooms:
Inhabit them
Translated by Susan Sherman
I name them:
Demiurges
Goblins
Dark numena
Argument:
Breath
Impulse
Sparkling alchemy within
I offer my ovaries
Here
Deep
alert and occult.
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
Have you seen?
Do you know?
I've seen the wines!
Hurry
Hasten
Make haste
Ganymede
Serve them me!
Crimson my gums
Must me
Cribble my palate
with wine
Divine, scan
Hurry
Hasten
Make haste.
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
Spread freshly ironed sheets
on my bed
this night
Cut the grass
Water it
Wet it
Soak it in
I want the solidarity of its smell
To initiate my may be
I want the fruit new and cool
I belie the camel's asperity
Singing to the dunes.
Understand me
Let moss
Forget infancy.
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
I was taking the pulse
of 28 days's vigor,
the ephemeral history of
its reduced time.
In palpitations, I weaseled
in expectancy, in suspense,
into its intimate nesting:
if blood flowed down,
if life flowed up...
Stitching, month to month,
the uterine nest,
balancing, then, the curves,
the immensity of the meeting
in the Fallopian tubes,
I sum up this minuscule cell
of mine
If I underline
life,
And of my four hundred
possible children
What can I say?
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
Mine was a formal puberty: inward borne and still.
Homing, vaguely perceiving at most
no know‑how
knowing nothing.
Such were the means
shaming and ashamed
for besieging, for butressing
my body.
With no schooling in Sex Ed
no primping
I made my bare and bony debut:
Mine was a chance coursing
through a dawn of sapient, nutrient juices
ripened glandular accuracy
forewarned pituitary
prompt estrogen.
I have come to my own terms.
I now know
the body shuns misleadings.
Thus, was my body raised.
Translated by Elizabeth Córdova
She umbilicates a precise saying
This, her bellying belly
This, her first attempt
Alluring, the lass
Loudly whispers of her cubby holes,
The intimate apparel of her purity,
These, her own demesnes.
She wishes to speak of menstruation
Say she's indisposed
Share her soiled self
How many times, how many,
Standing before the mirror
To proffer a mute's whistle
And, bedecked in menses and in quarantine
Put aside the stain of menstruation.
Then, raise the power that raises her
Then, the alchemy of sex.
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
On The Street, Buxom Pass Me,
a Pass Is Made at Them
Along the tense street the compliment echoes
and now it's someone else's.
It's feline sauntering that turn the heads
of bedazzled passers by.
Another's are the smiling, insinuable lips;
another's the mane, which in incense's echo,
she saliciduously shakes.
Bedecked they pass, benuded.
Of two‑timing heels I hear the tap on the cobblestones.
But I go, with brimming ears,
undetained, young walkers,
a stranger to the murmur
and those, its empty boasts,
or to the gesturing.
Like a she‑cat on her back, I defend myself
from parrotpainted girls
from their opulent breasts.
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
In the name of the pubis
and of the breasts
and of the holy mind,
may she grow to be Woman.
Amen.
Translated by Agueda Pizarro
Selección de Aposentos, 1985
fotografía
de Cirenaica Moreira
"Sin Título" 1996