JEANETTE LYNES [9764]

Jeanette Lynes

CANADÁ, se crió en una granja en el condado de Grey, Ontario. Estudió en la Universidad de York, donde obtuvo una licenciatura en 1979, una maestría en 1980 y un doctorado en 1988, y la Universidad del Sur de Maine, donde obtuvo una maestría en escritura creativa en 2005. Lynes es un profesor asociado de Inglés y Estudios de la Mujer en la Universidad San Francisco Xavier y co-editor de la Revista de Antigonish. Ella vive en Nueva Escocia.

OBRA.

1999, A Woman Alone on the Atikokan Highway (poetry)

2003, The Aging Cheerleaders Alphabet (poetry)

2003, Left Fields (poetry)

2007, Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letters and Poems (with Alison Calder, chapbook)

2008, It's Hard Being Queen: The Dusty Springfield Poems (poetry)

2009, The New Blue Distance (poetry)

2009, The Factory Voice (novel)

2012, Archive of the Undressed (poetry)

La oración de Twiggy

Disculpe Deidad suprema de la delgadez

Debe conocerme como Lesley Hornby de Londres Norte. 

Esto es lo que pasó-

Me estaba enjuagando con un shampú en la peluquería, 

el tipo dijo “Sígame Señorita”

Por no comer me dieron un Mustang. 

Lo gané- con un esfuerzo bárbaro

manteniendo mis ojos bien abiertos con tres pares de falsas pestañas 

que pesaban mucho.

No tuve menstruaciones desde 1962 (no recuerdo aquellos Alcatrazes del torso). 

Fui el rostro de 1966. Me llamaron:

Persona abandonada, la que enciende, marioneta pinchada. 

A Norte América le gustan los nombres

las mujeres cóncavas. Hice la tapa de Vogue 4 veces- más que la Reina!

Newsweek me llamó cuatro extremidades en busca de un cuerpo (ingenioso)

No quisiera fanfarronear-apenas escuché que tienes un sistema de recompensa-me gustan 

que los puntos se me acerquen. Oh hombre menudo, pido por una sola cosa 

–un recuerdo sencillo- el sabor del chocolate. 

Oscuro. Semi-dulce. 

No la cosa verdadera, simplemente la idea de la cosa. Amen.

Traducido del inglés por Myriam Rozenberg

Twiggy’s Prayer

Excuse me, Supreme Slender Deity—

You’ll know me as Lesley Hornby of North London. Here’s

    what happened—

I was rinsing a shampoo in the salon, this bloke says, “Follow

    me, Miss.”

For not eating they gave me a Mustang. I earned it—bloody

    hard,

holding my eyes wide open with three pairs of false lashes

    weighing them down.

I haven’t had monthlies since 1962 (I don’t miss those

Alcatrazes of the torso). I became the Face of 1966. They 

    called me names:

Waif, Kindling, Punctured Marionette. North America likes

    names,

concave women. I made the cover of Vogue four times— 

    more than the Queen!

Newsweek called me four limbs in search of a body (clever). 

    I don’t mean

to brag—it’s just I heard you’ve a reward system—I’d like the

    points

coming my way. O Wispy One, I ask for one thing alone—a 

    simple memory—

the taste of chocolate. Dark. Semi-sweet. Not the real thing, 

    merely the idea

of the thing. Amen.

The Inner World of the Orange

My mother’s most beloved trick: take a simple orange,

turn it into pure sorrow. She did this in the manner

of a spell, a story (the same story over, over). The dark

handkerchief of her words whisked away, and presto—

the dour ’30s, a girl whose teeth vibrated with ache, who

walked barefoot in snow. Who received one orange each year

in her Christmas sock. The story really began here—with her

hand rolling the cool pebbled flesh across her cheek

in that farmhouse so bitter she could see her breath.

With her inhaling its sweet citrus rodeo, wheeling it

along her sill. Sketching it with her last stubby crayon

for posterity. Telling her diary about the sunny supple star

from which it travelled to her. Positioning her thumb in its

softest point then stopping herself, praying for strength

to resist. Truth was, this is a modern girls’ story (the moral:

defer, defer) more than a saga of peasants rising from the

    dead

fires of their own hungers, as martyrs. After all, consider

the inner world of the orange—labial, lush, lost,

utterly lost at the first fissure in its pulpy stockade.

More fallen, even, than the common apple.

This all happened prior to me, which must make me

the logical conclusion, the sequel, if you like, to

the orange story, the sad document of a woman’s ultimate

    defeat,

the daughter who, like the wedding guest, must stop her life,

    must listen.

Fundamentals of Oxygen in Intimate Situations

The land languished.

The Inseminator parked his small truck,

its doors painted: We spread the seed, we meet your need.

The cows were lined up. I was told:

weed the peas (knowingly, I

plodded the shrivelled green).

He was a joyless man with a syringe.

    A country boy drove me away,

asked: would I care for an organism? Like he

wondered if I’d fancy beef dip (or like

my mother pouring The Inseminator tea after his work, grilling him:

did he feel like God, life’s germ in his very palm?

He shrugged—there were worse jobs

than shooting seed).

    Scorn was my middle name. I set my date straight—

“It’s orgasm, moron, and asking can’t give me one. Do you take

me for some mute bovine?” He was hurt so I let him

kiss me until his Volkswagen windows steamed, until

we were fogged, suspended in an enormous droplet, trying to recall

our science book—could we suffocate like this? (The book

was silent on fundamentals of oxygen in intimate situations.)

The boy had eager saliva.

    We were still breathing in the slowest

kind of rain. He asked: what was I thinking? I said, “Nothing”—

then felt the sudden press to say

something: “Wouldn’t it be bitchin’ if they found us here—

two dead organisms—tomorrow?”

He laughed and when

he forgot to show off learning he

didn’t possess, I liked him. We let science go.

I closed my eyes, thought not

of the queen but the heavy, swaying

cows back home, my mother’s tea sloshing in the stomach

of the grim seed-shooter bumping back

down the lane in his truck, the man for whom it was just

another working day.

Summer Waitresses, Bucko’s Resort, 1986

We were fat. Our midriffs wobbled, our twin chins

debated with each other. Pecans vaulted from pies

right to our thighs. The one we called Bones said

saying “pecan” cost 100 calories. Bones rose

above things. We were circuses of the flesh. Our

hair stranded under red triangle scarves, we cursed

the pulp mill’s early shift, each flapjack plate clattering

onto the counter. The Skidders pinched us, they dug

love handles, abundant butts. They toured us in their

muscle cars, made “You Shook Me All Night Long”

the soundtrack to our lives. They gave us stuff to inhale

that smelled like pine but wasn’t. Lavished Singapore

Slings on us, asked for our cherries, laughed long

after this was funny. We had big blurry bashes on purpling

lower ridges of Rockies behind the motel where

we worked. Someone sometimes wondered, if she

wasn’t too gone, “Where’s Bones?” Someone might reply

if she wasn’t too wasted, “Try the pool.” Sure enough

Bones would be swimming there, laps, a lone bulb

on a pole lighting her watery way. Some mill boy still

possessing the gift of words would ask, “What’s with her?”

We, the fat ones, understood: she’d swallowed a pecan or

worse, a whole brownie. We saw right through her

strokes: full-tilt penance. We knew dawn would reveal her

stick-arms still slicing the aqua correction, slower,

slower. This was the summer an ordinary plump girl could

marry a prince. We called to Bones in the early hours:

“Bones, come inside, watch the wedding.” We were coming

down, crowding the tube by the patio doors while elk

snuffled through our lawn and the princess towed her

ivory train up the aisle and Bones just kept

taking on water out there. Slapping the promise of herself

through drenched sky, lighter ever after.