Two Poems
By Minerva Reynosa
Translated by Stalina Villarreal
third landscape
it’s the ‘90s
and what i like these days is grunge
nirvana pearl jam stone temple pilots
soundgarden
but also
bands like
el gran silencio plastilina mosh zurdok
movimiento la flor del lingo el control
are playing everywhere
it was the time of avanzada regia
it was the ‘90s
and in the student newspaper la nave
they were hatching proposition 147 anti
ranger
we didn’t want vaqueros
cumbieros
wrangler pants
roper boots
it was the ‘90s
carlos salinas de gortari
the free trade agreement or nafta
ezln
selena y los dinos
country jazz polka cumbia norteña pop rock
balada ranchera
it’s incredible it’s impressive that you have
so many women fans
says verónica castro in y-vero-américa-va!
because as a woman sometimes it’s difficult to accept
another woman
or to admire another woman
it’s incredible it’s impressive
it’s the ‘90s
a different organization emerged in the
state of chiapas
national-violence professionals
and a foreign group
unaffiliated with the efforts of the society
of chiapas
they pummeled a painful blow to that state
and straight to the heart of all mexicans
seventh landscape
if you let me
is a conditional
a batterer
if you let me
all the friends a psychopath
an anxious fatigued man who quit anxiolytics
if you let me think
that this is that thing
revolving around my head
a flying saucer tattooed with crumbs
what takes place here
is an anatomy lesson
that decides
readies the body
for the slow rotation of the earth
if you let me
you could listen
or dance to this thing that flows endlessly
it delivers blows around the pain
around a series of cloudy
thoughts
strange ghostly concepts
if i transferred a testimony through the rectal tract
it is and will be a psychopath
swimming in high tide
with an unarrived future
held at the left corner
alongside the heart
with emphysema
if you let me
see cute spring chickens cute kids underlying
philosophical kids
in lupus
and wolf to the sex
separating them at birth
accelerated
with adored signals from saturn
in the desert
if you let me extract that oil
and say its scent
is an open stretchmark in keloid
with an emotional void
of heritage and self-esteem
and that my voice
that my deep tone
the deep tone of my voice
and that my deep craving for instance
that my hunger and that my touch
is an animal claw
with some evolutionary modifications to the
claw
i am the man at the end of the tunnel
with pain
and ungulate wounds
that
tetanus
diphtheria
treasures spring chicken bodies oscillating
sharp with irons burning
perfumed to vertigo
cute spring chickens like pastoral scenes from india
slippery
swimming in mermaid menstruation
floating with pain
and the scent in wasteland
rainbows
spring chicken bodies
urban bodies
rural bodies
round whole
grown
floating from the branch in blood
and iron
oscillating in wasteland
treasures of that poplar
where a fleshy uterus
is a spicy sweet acacia grove
with purple flowers
and deep roots
crowned with a nest of fetuses
without the government
without rights
without complaint
eclipsing poplar
beloved bodies
little unfinished bodies
in the imperative
sprouting lance-like
in a sizzling time
that unfinished
makes the payroll of bones
with a luminescent acid
phosphoric
if you let me
we’d talk parsimoniously about the kids
in the niño artillero
voiceless
without saying much
because diarrhea
because the nerve
because prostitution
because spring chickens accelerate us
if you let me detach myself from my feet
from the ground
and feel that the threads of my fear have already left
without the government
without rights
without protection
my ill-fated
my wretched
my let’s not forget to blame the liar
he’s a psychopath
he’s a doctor who prescribes antidiarrheics
amphetamines
paracetamol
bromide
apostilled chronicles where it’s concluded that
pastoral neonates float from the branch
of the great chichihuacuauhco
nodriza tree
not poplar
mesquite or sweet acacia grove
a chest like a great bulbous cactus
in the desert
that swallows the mountains
rock curtains
that descend nomadic to the body
lower
still lower
floating for those mouths that suckle
that don’t bite
salty from fear
the burn
the lighter
milking the government
no morals
no religion
no language
no drain
no resonance
toward the horizon more mesquites
burnt bodies
neonates thirsty from cyclamate
floating like fog
among trees
without justice spiritualist stomachs
because of its great features
floating in wasteland
pastoral scenes
with the bad sense of smell from a landscape with
drunkards
or a landscape with hanged people
from Iremos que te pienso entre las filas y el olfato pobre de un paisaje con borrachos o ahorcados (2020)
Minerva Reynosa is a Mexican poet, an arts administrator, and a Doctor of Social Sciences with a specialization in Tradition Studies from El Colegio de Michoacán. She has published the poetry books Una infanta necia (2003), Emötoma (2007, Carmen Alardín Prize 2016), Atardercer en los suburbios (2011), Fotogramas de mi corazón conceptual absolutamente ciego (2012) Mammut (video game app 2015), the translation of Photograms of My Heart Absolutely Blind realized by Stalina Villarreal, Mammut & Jinba-ittai, (2019), Larga oda a la salvación de Osvaldo coauthored with Sergio Ernesto Ríos, and Iremos que te pienso entre las filas y el olfato pobre de un paisaje con borrachos o ahorcados (2020). Her work has been translated into German, English, Swedish, Russian, and French. She has presented at academic conferences and literary festivals in Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, United States, Spain, France, Germany, Morocco, Sweden, Russia, and Finland.
Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal lives as a rhyming-slogan creative activist. She is a Generation 1.5 poet (mexicanx and Xicanx), an essayist, a translator, a sonic-improv collaborator, and an assistant professor of Creative Writing. Her debut hybrid collection Watcha is forthcoming from Deep Vellum Publishing. Her poetry can be found in the Rio Grande Review, Texas Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Acentos Review, Defunkt Magazine, and elsewhere. She has published translations of poetry, including Enigmas, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (2015), Photograms of My Conceptual Heart Absolutely Blind by Minerva Reynosa (2016), Kilimanjaro by Maricela Guerrero (2018), and Postcards in Braille by Sergio Pérez Torres (2021). She is the recipient of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry.
Poesía en acción is an Action Books blog feature for Latin American and Iberian poetry in translation and the translator micro-interview series. It was created by Katherine M. Hedeen and is currently curated and edited by Olivia Lott with web editing by Paul Cunningham.