NATALIE SCENTERS-ZAPICO [16.599] Poeta de Estados Unidos

Natalie Scenters-Zapico 

Nació en El Paso, Texas, EE.UU. Su primer libro, The Verging Cities , del cual proviene esta selección, ha sido publicado por The Center For Literary Publishing, como parte del Mountain West Poetry Series. Sus poemas han aparecido en The Believer, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, Palabra, entre otros más. Ha sido profesora de literatura y escritura creativa en Inglés y Español en la Universidad de Texas en El Paso, la Universidad de Nuevo México y la Juan Diego Catholic High School.

Presentamos tres poemas de la joven poeta Natalie Scenters-Zapico. Su primer libro, The Verging Cities, del cual proviene esta selección, ha sido publicado por The Center For Literary Publishing, como parte del Mountain West Poetry Series. La traducción de los poemas son del escritor y traductor Bernardo Jáuregui

http://circulodepoesia.com/

Embozado en cachemira lee a Žižek  en vez de

extraer los septembrinos trozos de bistec dentro

de una bolsa de chícharos del congelador. En sus labios

cien pétalos azules, flores secas

del fondo del jarrón de un amante anterior.

Lame sus dedos, toca los vellos

de un tronco de árbol macerado en cada página.

Espero; un diluvio corre de mi boca completa

con un oxidado Honda Civic— las ventanas

todas estrelladas. Mis venas brotan a ligar mis sienes

a un enchufe. Pierdo el conocimiento y entonces

el resurgimiento más angelical de  la luz…

Él dice que me he convertido

en un ejemplo de Žižek — Lo irreal, estamos

fascinados con lo irreal. Alcanzo mi muela

posterior, la giro a la derecha y trenzo

mi cabello. Si soy irreal, susurro, tú debes

ser tan real como mi cabello, el cual cortaré

con estas tijeras. Tú dices: córtalo

corto. Siempre he querido saber si podía hacer el amor

con un niño que siempre he sabido era una mujer.

*

El sol que cuida los campos de grano quema

de café el matorral esta época del año. El esmog cuelga

sobre las ciudades hermanas como una horda de ángeles

tan espesa que abro mi boca y aparecen llagas

en la punta de mi lengua. Desde la carretera, veo

el cementerio donde algún día descansará mi cuerpo.

Cuando muera el tropel de coches será un mar

de olas espumosas. El estrato terrestre será el peso

del agua que no conocí. Su peso tirará

de mi útero, se sentará en la mandíbula cuadrada de mi cara.

Nunca probaré las piedras, las semillas, lo sucio

en este aire otra vez. Un pañuelo apretado detrás

de mi garganta, me sofocaré si despierto agitada alguna vez.

El diablo arrancará mi lengua y la oprimirá entre

sus quijadas. Me dirá: tu cuerpo antes fue un océano

que el desierto, con su sed, una noche se tragó entero.

Mujer encontrada cerca a Sunland Park Mall

El Paso, Texas

Cuando él encuentra a la mujer que los clientes de Target

han reportado, la boca de ella se abre

y murmura, agua. Él piensa qué obvio

encontrar una mujer que cruzó el desierto

sin agua suficiente. Se acerca a su cara; su cuerpo

la ha traicionado. El agua es más pesada entre más seco

es el paisaje. Él coloca su bota en el cuello de ella

y mira cual lento el rostro enrojece de sangre.

Cuando el otro agente fronterizo pregunta en qué estado encontró

a esa mujer, él tiene una historia que involucra al agua,

cómo algunos pueden comprarla en Target y cómo otros

no saben cómo llamarla por su nombre.


Hay un pájaro en mi boca

Lo encontré en tu vientre, y lo agarré
con dos dedos. Guardé el pájaro
en una pequeña percha tras la oreja.
Le arranqué las plumas, taponé  mis mandibulas
con ellas como si fueran tabaco de mascar,
y escupí los hilos negros
en un tazón de polyestereno. Una noche
el pájaro murió. El pico aplastado, los huesos
quebrantados. Sí, lo hicimos. Tu corazón
celoso, mi cuerpo asqueado
por el sabor de la semilla y el ladrido.
No queríamos el pájaro.
Lo hicimos durante la cena
has llegado a mi memoria
mediante la colocación de un dedo
en mi oreja. Puse una mano
en tu boca para agarrar el ave.

Y lo aplastamos
juntos. Es sencillo, lo hicimos
y lo hablamos con facilidad. A través de
la memoria, matamos al
pájaro que nunca fue nuestro.
Ahora nos hemos convertido en
asesinos de pájaros, dices
y arrojas el cuerpo flácido del ave
en la basura. Alcanzo a agarrar
tu cara, pero he perdido
ambas manos, cada dedo
desaparece en tus pupilas,
nuestros ínfimos momentos cruciales.

*Traducción de Ana Gorría.
http://traducciones.lagallaciencia.com/search?updated-max=2016-09-19T09:07:00%2B02:00&max-results=7



There Is a Bird in My Mouth

I found it on your belly, and caught it
with two fingers. I kept the bird
on a little perch behind my ear.

I plucked its feathers, stuffed them
against my jaw like chewing tobacco,
and spit the black threads

into a styrofoam cup. One night
the bird died. Crushed beak, split
bone—we did it. Your heart

jealous, my body disgusted
by the taste of seed and bark—
we didn’t want the bird.

We did it over dinner,
you reached into my memory
by placing a finger

in my ear. I placed a hand
in your mouth to catch the bird
and we smashed it

together. This is simple, we did it
and spoke of it with ease. Through
the memory, we killed

the bird that was never ours.
Now we’ve become
bird butchers, you say

and throw the bird’s limp body
in the trash. I reach to clasp
your face, but have lost

both my hands. Each finger
disappeared into your pupils,
our little black cruxes.

Escaping The Verging Cities 

  

And when I realize the woman in the film looks just like my sister and the film will end

as all snuff films end, I wonder if I should turn off my computer.

And the lens, too burnt to tell if the man that pulls her hair has a cigarette or a toothpick

in his mouth, only reveals I can’t stand to see her planked body.

And when I tell myself the knife at her throat will kill her, I can’t help but remember

when I jumped into myself through a mirror at a bar where I had too much cocaine.

And how a blue-faced man put his hand up my skirt, how he delicately arched his fingers

and made me cry until I thought: people find beauty in a field of weeds.

And the next day my mouth was an anthill and I cried in my closet thinking he’d be the

only myrmecologist to see the colonies inside me.

And later I drank insecticide, but the ants poured out of my every orifice. They

whispered: now we know your deepest tissue—it is rotting.

And I asked: have I been rotting since they deported me? And they said: no, we’ve been

boring holes in you much longer than that.

And the weeds in my closet prophesized, before they died, that I’d be snapped in half and

fed to monsters in an ocean I’ve never known.

And I know the weeds truly grow when I look closer at the screen and realize the girl in

the film couldn’t be my sister, but that braided hair could only belong to me.

The Archeologist Came To Hunt Trilobites  

hidden in the rocks. He looked

for the curve of their antennae. He hunted

trilobites and ferns caked in white.

He hunted trilobites and ferns until

he found a human skull. A woman,

her teeth blanched yellow, her cartilage

slooped over her face. The archeologist

left her severed body for the sun

to eat, but then it wouldn’t leave him.

He hunted trilobites and ferns, but after

that day, he left the desert and wrote:

The human skull was of a girl ages 16-19.

I’d never really seen violence

until that day. Her face was already

bone. Her body, scattered.

The archeologist learned how

to love a place quiet, pull it off you,

how to brush each bone and take

its print. The archeologist came

to hunt trilobites and ferns caked in white.

But she too, was always hunted.

The Corner Store Clerk Says Her Name Was Ofelia  

and it started, with a phone call. A man

asking for fifty thousand dollars. Ofelia

dressed her children in plain cotton, she picked

them up at the door of every house and store—

parking lots are how people go missing.

The tree in her front yard swollen with winged

ants, she couldn’t sleep. Fear: the tree was dying.

She forgot to paint its trunk white. She plugged

her ears, disconnected the phone and boarded

every window. She dreamt her body cut

in half—a perfect border. When Ofelia

found her son’s body, a display of limbs,

by the tree, she thought of the word: drown.

His blood was sap the tree could not stop oozing.

The Verging Cities Watch Me  

I walk home from a bar alone, stop

       on Rim Road to let the lights of El Paso

              and Juárez switch on

              and off, sew themselves over all the ugly

       of my body. I hold my breath, and hope

all that light will turn

into black beetles to swarm me quiet.

      But when I open my body I am alone,

             alone only the way these two cities can be

             alone, only the way I am alone with him.

       When we are naked, we are pale as flyers

for women gone missing. He whispers:

             you’ll never sleep at night if you don’t look

        at what I have hidden under my eye lids. 

I inch the skin up like a blind, reveal two

nails where his eyes should be. If only

        I had loved him sooner, how I’d have kissed

              each eye green.

The Poem Shows Up  

as a sixteen year old girl with long hair, glitter eye shadow,

in a One Direction t-shirt. It shows up and sits in a corner of your office

on an iPhone tweeting:  Zac Efron is my husband #celebrityhotties.

Ashamed, you wipe the poem’s makeup off, you outline its eyes

in brown and dress it in a designer discount  sweater. You tell it:

be a man, be serious, now say something profound. You tell it:

act a prayer, act a song, now act as a traditional father.

But the poem rolls its eyes and tells you: I think he thinks I’m cute

but not hot. I want to be hot. It’s so immature you send it to therapy

but the Lexapro makes it say: Wait, you want me to do what? Yeah, no.

You want to make it wiser. You want to find the place that’s making it

so childish. So you prop its body on a table, you create an impromptu

surgical theatre and invite a group of men to take notes on how you pin

flaps of its skin back, tack tubes and wires across its naked body.

You show them how to create a roadmap men can follow again and again

in case they get lost. And the poem bleeds, it bleeds and you

don’t understand where all this blood is coming from. You are the man

doing this to a sixteen year old girl, to show the theatre why the poem

hasn’t been fitting in this box, hasn’t been pushing to the next line,

hasn’t subverted, hasn’t contained, hasn’t acted a prayer, a song.

Why the poem isn’t a traditional father. There’s blood in your hairline

and the theatre takes notes until the girl dies. You cut her body in pieces

and tell yourself you can use this liver later, this heart might be wild

enough for someone else,  this kidney might save a life. When you can’t

recognize the poem from the girl any longer  you wash your hands

and tell yourself  you’ve done something your father would be proud of.

.