Cathy Linh Che
Autora de la colección de poesía, Split (Alice James Books, 2014),
ganadora del Premio de Poesía Kundiman. Es poeta, profesora, que vive en Brooklyn, NY.
Poeta americana vietnamita de Los Ángeles y Long Beach, CA, recibió su licenciatura de la Universidad de Reed y su MFA de la Universidad de Nueva York. Ha recibido becas y residencias de Poetas y Escritores, el centro de trabajo Bellas Artes en Provincetown, Kundiman , Hedgebrook , Poetas Casa , El Asian American Literary Review, el Centro para las Artes del Libro, Workspace Residencia del Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, y Jerome Travel Foundation Grant.
Editora fundadora de la revista en línea Paperbag, s, Directora General en Kundiman.
ENTIERRO
Llueve, el olor a tierra fresca, y tú, abuela,
en una caja. Te entierro en la distancia, después de 22 años de no verte a ti
ni a tus devastadas manos.
Entierro tu cabello, con raya a un lado y sujetado por detrás,
el áo dài de terciopelo plisado,
las herramientas que usabas para sembrar,
la apoplejía que preservó tu lado derecho ,
la tierra que se removió cuando te volviste a casar,
tu dolor por la muerte de mi abuelo,
la guerra que amputó la pierna de tu padre,
la guerra que destrozó tu vajilla,
tu casa de la infancia arrasada
por las ruedas dentadas
de un tanque estadounidense—
Lo entierro todo.
Aprendiste que nada permanece en esta vida,
ni tu hija, ni tu tío,
ni siquiera la dignidad de dejar este mundo
con honor. Las úlceras en la cadera de estar en la cama
estaban limpias y curadas. Que yo supiera, oíste
hablar al niño una sola vez,
y cuando nos encontramos por primera vez,
las lágrimas humedecieron un lado de tu cara.
Sostuve tu mano y te dije:
bà nogai, bà ngoai
Diez años más tarde, regresé.
Llovía sobre el sepulcro.
En la foto de la parte superior de la tumba,
mirabas como lo hacía mi madre.
Encendimos las varitas de incienso y las clavamos.
Arrojamos las hierbas invasoras a la bahía.
Versión de Carlos Alcorta
Pomegranate
I open my chest and birds flock out.
In my mother’s garden, the roses flare
toward the sun, but I am an arrow
pointing back.
I am Persephone,
a virgin abducted.
In the Underworld,
I starve a season
while the world wilts
into the ghost
of a summer backyard.
My hunger open and raw.
I lay next to a man
who did not love me—
my body a performance,
his body a single eye—
a director watching an actress
commanding her
to scintillate.
I was the clumsy acrobat.
When he came, I split open
like a pomegranate
and ate six of my own ruddy seeds.
I was the whipping boy.
Thorny, barbed wire
wound around a muscular heart.
Originally published in Split (Alice James Books, 2014)
Doc, there was a hand
Doc, there was a hand, my bed
was pushed across the room,
the wallpaper looked, I drew
faces on the flowers, this one
with closed eyes, and when I woke
they suddenly opened. I watched
my father wash his hands with gasoline,
he always smelled of something
burning. He held out his hands,
twin flames, volcanic rock.
In the room, I mapped out
an archipelago of needs—
mine, then his, then my father’s.
Stray rocks, a map. Doc, you call it
schema, me shut-eyed, my cousin’s
hostile need. I dreamt
my arms were raised. I think
in surrender. I’ve been studying
Freud’s On Dreams, wish fulfillment,
my cousin’s hostile need. He returns
like a wild obsession. (There, like a skein
in my dreams.) Archipelago of desire.
I skip stones, one to another.
My mother’s shame, father’s cold
and brutal shielding. There was
more tenderness in the rain.
I woke with an archipelago
of bruises. It wasn’t my father.
It was a rolodex, scattering
pages. A child’s hips and fingers
long and thick.
Projector
Cathy Linh Che's poem "Projector" is a quiet, tense poem that captures the helplessness of a child forced into an adult situation. The poem is painful in its sparseness and heartbreaking in its untold brutality.
The poem is part of Che's forthcoming collection 'Split', available from Alice James Books on April 29th.
-- Karissa Chen, Fiction & Poetry Editor
While I slept, my cousin placed
his mother’s mask on me,
asked me if I loved him.
He wore wolf ears.
I willed him to hear the change
in atmosphere, the tilt of air
—no, no, no—
his finger slid
under the white
underwear.
The air was cool,
my face on fire.
I wore my woman’s mask.
Underneath,
I was ten years old.
When he kissed me, the edges
of our magnetic fields touched.
Inside, my heart compressed
into a black hole.
Burial
There is the rain, the odor of fresh earth, and you,
grandmother,
in a box. I bury the distance, 22 years of not meeting you
and your ruined hands.
I bury your hair, parted to the side and pinned back,
your áo dài of crushed velvet,
the implements you used to farm,
the stroke which claimed your right side,
the land you gave up when you remarried,
your grief over my grandfather’s passing,
the war that evaporated your father’s leg,
the war that crushed your bowls,
your childhood home razed
by the rutted wheels
of an American tank—
I bury it all.
You learned that nothing stays in this life,
not your daughter, not your uncle,
not even the dignity of leaving this world
with your pants on. The bed sores on your hips
were clean and sunken in. What did I know, child
who heard you speak only once,
and when we met for the first time,
tears watered the side of your face.
I held your hand and said,
bà ngoại, bà ngoại,
Ten years later, I returned.
It rained on your gravesite.
In the picture above your tomb,
you looked just like my mother.
We lit the joss sticks and planted them.
We kept the encroaching grass at bay.
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