Megan Lent
Joven poeta estadounidense que vive en California y estudia en Los Ángeles. Colabora con distintas revistas literarias.
Escribe corto de ficción, poesía, y no ficción, y ha sido publicada en línea en VICE, The Nervous Breakdown, Shabby Doll House, and Metazen, and in print in Lost in Thought, Illuminati Girl Gang, Big Lucks, Pop Serial, and Keep This Bag Away From Children.
Es autora del libro electrónico Patron Saints and the chapbook The End of the World, publicado por Dig That Book and Reality Hands.
CANCIONES DE SEXO
el pañuelo de un dólar, naranja a su manera,
fuerza mis manos a la devoción,
guiando con seguridad mis muñecas en una geometría lejos de
mis pies de punta, mis rodillas hincadas,
(sostenía tu bolso para que pudieras aplicar el rojo en tus labios, chanel rouge,
y besar la tumba de Marilyn Monroe,
tus labios que en su desafiante aridez
disuadían a la lluvia
de rodar por tu frío rostro,
tus labios que siempre lo exageraban
escupiéndole tus gritos y llenándolo de saliva)
frota con aceite mis muslos escasos y
cuando le pregunto qué le preocupa y no dice,
se toma su tiempo para responder. la colección de lamparitas
que seguía comprando online
es de gran ayuda, iluminando
mi pelo de zafiro, su torso arrugado,
nuestros restos de recuerdos de embarazosas pérdidas
que dejan de trabajar para que la oxitocina pueda empezar su turno,
(¿recuerdas aquella vez que creíste ver una estrella fugaz
sobre el cementerio de hollywood forever
hasta que recordaste
el ácido en tu columna? así es él, precioso y del color del miedo a soñar,
grande y brillante y rápido cruzando el cielo y todo en tu
derrotada calavera)
¿cuál es el nombre de la enfermedad
que transforma cada recuerdo perfecto
en un recuerdo triste?
- poema de Megan Lent, publicado originalmente en Metatron:
http://www.onmetatron.com/blog/2015/3/12/sex-songs-megan-lent
- traducción de José María Martínez (Tive), 2015
SEX SONGS
the dollar store scarf, orange in its own way,
forces my hands into devotion,
loosely guiding my wrists in some geometry away from
my foot-to-ankle, my bended knees,
(he held your bag so you could apply your red lipstick, chanel rouge,
and kiss marilyn monroe’s tomb,
your lips in their defiant dryness
dissuading the rain
from tumbling down past your cold face,
your lips always overdoing it
mumbling your shouts to him and making it up with saliva)
he rubs oil around my forgettable thighs and
when i ask what he’s been afraid to say,
he takes so long to answer. the collection of lamps
he kept buying online
illuminate, so helpfully,
my sapphire hair, his ridged torso,
our remnants of memories of awkward loss
getting off work so oxytocin can start its shift,
(do you remember the time you thought you saw a shooting star
over the hollywood forever cemetery
until you remembered
the acid in your spine? he is like that, beautiful and the color of fear of dreaming,
large and bright and quick through the sky and all in your
tired skull)
what’s the name of the disease
where every perfect memory
turns into a sad one?
he follado con la regla toda la semana
encontré un condón usado en el váter
mientras meaba
por fuera estaba cubierto de sangre
y por dentro repleto de semen
vi entonces toda la corrida, la sangre, el pis y el agua del váter
muchas sustancias diferentes
muy asquerosas
pero volví a mirar mi sangre
y su semen
y me sentí bien al contemplar aquello que había estado tan junto
dentro de nosotros
Este poema apareció en Illuminati Girl Gang Vol. 1 coordinado por Gabby Gabby y es una traducción libre de Luna Miguel.
(you live in my blood you’re
a beautiful thing)
I am writing to you on a bus that’s in Hollywood.
The man beside me is snoring and behind us
two women speak quick Spanish and a few seats away
someone smells like shit
—more like shit
than I’ve ever smelled another person smell like shit. I am writing
to you
with my head turned to the side and my tongue stuck between my front teeth,
biting lightly the way I always have and the way you
treated my neck that morning on Melrose Avenue. I’m writing a letter to send to your house,
that I could just as simply bring to you. But I’m no pigeon. I’m writing on
a notepad from a Best Western in Arizona,
the one you drew a heart on the night before we saw the Grand Canyon. The night
we sat in a hot tub in our underwear and I put my foot on your leg,
and nothing could
handle us.
I asked you this morning,
“Did you really say that you felt close to me again last night
or did I dream that?”
You said,
“I said that,” and then made fruit smoothies.
If you were a VHS
I wouldn’t rewind you
for the next girl.
Memories
I went to a poetry reading and a guy I’d slept with once read a list of everything he’d done in Los Angeles and I wasn’t on it. I drank a Sapporo in the park and afterward listened to you cry about death in the bathroom of a diner. Later we lay in your bed in a hot room and ignored our few responsibilities.
I sat in a red-headed girl’s closet, our feet pressed together, chanting. We were 9 or 10. I had made up a very intricate language full of linguistic roots, and told her that we were princesses exiled to Earth from a distant planet, and this was our language. She moved away within the next year and when she came back I had to visit her in the hospital in the eating disorder wing, and we would play cards and try not to talk.
I had three friends in sixth grade and we called ourselves the Fearsome Foursome. We were drawn to each other due to a disdain for the other kids, which made them not like us, which made us hate them more. It was a cycle. Bianca was a dancer and Rachel took ballet classes but wasn’t as good as Bianca. Once Rachel kissed Gina in a swimming pool and Bianca said “LESBIANS” loudly. I was never allowed to sleep at their houses, which were in the mountains, which is where I grew up. We moved from the mountains because our neighbors started cooking meth. In seventh grade Bianca, Rachel, and Gina became friends with Brittany and Emily and Jessica and started to play truth-or-dare at lunch and make MySpace profiles and kiss boys at the movies. I stopped talking to them. I stopped talking to anyone. I don't know where they are now.
I would make small huts and cabins out of sticks and leaves and mud with my brother. For the fairies. We set them up on moss-covered rocks and waited. No fairies ever came, I don't think. He enlisted a decade later. He sends me photos of his boots.
I liked a boy in high school who played Tituba in a parody of The Crucible that my friend Lucas wrote. One day I invited the boy to hang out. He picked me up at the bakery on Freeport and 4th and we went to his house and smoked weed out of an apple. We started making out as his dog watched. I asked what he wanted to do and he said he wanted me to give him head, which I had never done, but my friend Chris had said that his girlfriend’s handjobs always hurt, because of friction, so I was afraid of touching this boy’s dick, so I just awkwardly moved it around with my tongue. He jacked off the rest of the way and we both watched a drop of cum ooze out. Later we listened to Bob Dylan’s Christmas album. He went down on me, naked, and told me I was “cute in a Megan Lent way.” Two weeks later he went to prom with a different girl. I’d see him in creative writing class and make a point of laughing.
I threw my favorite stuffed animal in anger on the ground of the parking lot, and I didn’t know why.
I walked with you down Sunset from Silverlake to Westwood in the middle of the night trying to get you not to hate me.
I’m fifteen days sober and I deserve better
I’m watching a Kickstarter pledge amount go up exponentially
in my post-symbolist poetry class, trying to care about Wallace
Stevens and failing. Maybe I’m just stupid,
who knows. I’m realizing that there’s a whole
subconscious part of me that I’m not/cannot be aware
of. This is the part of me that hates you
when we’re cooking when I look at you meanly and you
ask what’s wrong and I tell you that
nothing is, let’s just cook this rice. I am replacing
alcohol with coffee, watching
billboards for beer and gin all over town and
watching my friends order whiskey sours
while I’m killing a Shirley Temple with no cherries. The
professor is now discussing vulgarity in Swedish
poetry, and I am considering texting you
about how your shaved face stings me
so sweetly
in my sleep.
I’m not allowed to be happy, I think. I’m afraid
of so many things—lotus seed pods, steep hills, rotting food,
maggots, the religious right, most men, computer viruses,
losing
you—
today I have $27 in my checking account and I need to buy
frozen vegetarian dinners and I need to apply for jobs
and I haven’t shaved my underarms or legs in
over a week, but when I look out the window
of the Humanities building
and see a soft tree sighing,
I know that I am ok.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario