LEE ANN RORIPAUGH
Lee Ann Roripaugh (Nacida en Laramie, Wyoming, EE.UU.) es una poeta americana.
Se crió en Laramie, Wyoming, hija del poeta Robert Roripaugh. Se graduó en la Universidad de Indiana con un MM en historia de la música, un BM en interpretación de piano, y una maestría en escritura creativa.
Su poesía ha aparecido en Black Warrior Review, Cream City Review, Crab Orchard Review, New England Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Phoebe, and Seneca Review.
Da clases en la Universidad de Dakota del Sur.
Premios
Academy of American Poets Prize
AWP Intro Award
1995 Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize
1998 National Poetry Series , for Beyond Heart Mountain selected by Ishmael Reed
2000 Asian American Literature Awards finalist
2003 Bush Artist Fellowship [ 4 ]
2004 Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose
2003 Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry 2nd Place
Obras
Beyond Heart Mountain. Penguin Books. 1999. ISBN 978-0-14-058920-7.
Year of the Snake. Southern Illinois University Press. 2004. ISBN 978-0-8093-2569-6.
On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year . Southern Illinois University Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0-8093-2929-8.
Antologías
Robert Pack and Jay Parini, eds. (1994). American Identities: Contemporary Multicultural Voices . UPNE. ISBN 978-0-87451-759-0 .
Gerald Costanzo, Jim Daniels, eds. (2000). American Poetry: The Next Generation . Carnegie Mellon University Press. ISBN 978-0-88748-343-1 .
Linda M. Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier, Nancy Curtis, eds. (2002). "Pearls". Woven on the Wind: Women Write about Friendship in the Sagebrush West . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-21920-9 .
Victoria M. Chang, ed. (2004). "Transplanting". Asian American poetry: the next generation . University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07174-4 .
Lorrie Goldensohn, ed. (2006). American war poetry: an anthology . Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13310-4 .
William J. Walsh, ed. (2006). "Snow Country". Under the rock umbrella: contemporary American poets, 1951-1977. Mercer University Press. ISBN 978-0-88146-047-6 .
EL SUEÑO DE LA CARPA
La gente viaja desde muy lejos para ver
mis pinturas de peces
— la engalanada coraza de sus escamas,
la aparente configuración de sus ojos en
anillos de flexibles alveolos, un brillante
latigazo de la aleta y la cola
que parece tan real que casi podías hundir
una profunda red
en el papel y tirar hacia arriba del húmedo
peso de una carpa dorada,
una trucha brillante o la poderosa
ascensión de una lubina con
la boca amoldada hacia el sorprendido, sonoro
“oh” de la veleta
de un niño. Cogí los ejemplos del mar,
del lago y de un estanque de peces de colores
en el jardín trasero, con cuidado
de que sus bocas no se desgarraran
por el anzuelo, de que sus escamas se astillaran o el sedoso
tejido de sus colas
se rasgara por una mano torpe. Los guardaba en
grandes recipientes de cristal, los alimentaba
con alas de mosquito o con crisálidas secas de gusanos de seda
administrándoselas con palillos,
y cuando terminé de hacer los bocetos,
rápidamente los llevé
de vuelta y los puse en libertad de nuevo. Toda
la noche sueño que nado
con estos peces como una carpa dorada de puntos negros
sobre escamas cloisonné,
desperdigadas sobre la superficie por el engañoso
brillo cremoso de
la luna o el crepitar de luces de luciérnaga
sobre del agua.
Y todas las noches estoy animado una vez
más por el olor
del cebo del anzuelo, por mi predecible
deseo de las cosas
terrestres, y cada vez me sorprendo de nuevo
por la punción del anzuelo
en mi labio que me rasga sin piedad
en el aire brillante,
engarzando mis branquias en el fuego, el afilado, plateado
dolor del cuchillo que
me raja abriéndome fácilmente de la cola
a la garganta para poner al descubierto
el rojo flexible de mis branquias crudas,
la película translúcida
de mi bolsa de aire, el crecimiento lechoso de mi
estómago y el gris
marmóreo del rollo de mis intestinos. Me levanto
tarde cada día y trabajo
con la luz más brillante. Cuando yo muera,
llevaré mis pinturas
hasta el lago y las meteré en el agua.
En primer lugar los bordes de
tinta se desdibujarán, y luego habrá
un gran frenesí de aletas,
colas y cuerpos comienzan a florecer
a la vida otra vez, cada
pez desprendiéndose de su lienzo de seda
o papel de arroz —un
remolino de color, movimiento, nadando lejos.
Versión de Carlos Alcorta
Dream Carp
People traveled from miles away to see
my paintings of fish—
the jeweled armor of their scales, the beadlike
set of their eyes in
rubbery socket rings, the glimmering
swish of fin and tail
so real it seemed that you could almost dip
a net deep into
the paper and pull up the arching wet
weight of a golden carp,
a shiny trout, or the dark muscular
heft of a bass with
its mouth stretched into the surprised, wiry
“oh” of a child’s wind
sock. I captured my models from the sea,
lake, and goldfish pond
in the back garden, so careful not to
let their mouths be torn
by the hook, their scales chipped, or the silky
tissue of their tails
ripped by a clumsy hand. I kept them in
large glass bowls, fed them
mosquito wings or dry silkworm pupas
offered from chopsticks,
and when I was finished making sketches,
I quickly took them
back and set them free again. Every
night I dream I swim
with these fish as a golden carp—black spots
on cloisonné scales,
pulled to the surface by the deceptive
creamy luster of
the moon or the sizzle of firefly lights
across the water.
And every night I am tempted once
again by the smell
of the baited hook, by my predictable
hunger for earthly
things, and each time I am surprised again
by the stinging hook
in my lip that pulls me mercilessly
into the bright air,
setting my gills on fire, the sharp, silver
pain of the knife that
slits me open so easily from tail
to throat to reveal
the scarlet elastic of my raw gills,
the translucent film
of my air sac, the milky rise of my
stomach, and the gray
marbled coil of my intestines. I rise
late each day, and work
in brighter light. When I die, I will
have my paintings brought
down to the lake and slipped into the water.
First the edges of
ink will blur, and then there will be a great
flurry as the fins,
tails, and bodies begin blossoming in-
to life again, each
fish detaching from its canvas of silk
or rice paper—a
swirl of color, motion, swimming away.
Happy Hour
I always forget the name,
delphinium,
even though it was the flower
the hummingbirds
loved best. They came in pairs—sleek,
emerald-bright
heads, the clockwork machinery
of their blurred wings
thrumming swift, menacing engines.
They slipped their beaks.
as if they were swizzle sticks, deep
into the blue
throat of delphinium and sucked
dry the nectar-
chilled hearts like goblets full of sweet,
frozen daiquiri.
I liked to sit on the back porch
in the evenings,
watching them and eating Spanish
peanuts, rolling
each nut between thumb and forefinger
to rub away
the red salty skin like brittle
tissue paper,
until the meat emerged gleaming,
yellow like old
ivory, smooth as polished bone.
And late August,
after exclamations of gold
flowers, tiny
and bitter, the caragana
trees let down their
beans to ripen, dry, and rupture—
at first there was
the soft drum of popcorn, slick with oil,
puttering some-
where in between seed, heat, and cloud.
Then sharp cracks like cap
gun or diminutive fireworks,
caragana
peas catapulting skyward like
pellet missiles.
Sometimes a meadowlark would lace
the night air with
its elaborate melody,
rippling and sleek
as a black satin ribbon. Some-
times there would be
a falling star. And because
this happened in
Wyoming, and because this was
my parents’ house,
and because I’m never happy
with anything,
at any time, I always wished
that I was some-
where, anywhere else, but here.
Transplanting
For my mother, Yoshiko Horikoshi Roripaugh
1. X-Ray
My mother carried the chest x-ray
in her lap on the plane, inside
a manila envelope that read
Do Not Bend and, garnished
with leis at the Honolulu Airport,
waited in line—this strange image
of ribcage, chain-link vertebrae,
pearled milk of lung, and the murky
enigmatic chambers of her heart
in hand. Until it was her turn
and the immigration officer held
the black-and-white film up
to sun, light pierced clean through
her, and she was ushered from one
life through the gate of another,
wreathed in the dubious and illusory
perfume of plucked orchids.
2. Ceramic Pig
Newly arrived in New Mexico,
stiff and crisp in new dungarees,
her honeymoon, they drove
into the mountains in a borrowed car,
spiraling up and up toward the rumor
of deer, into the green tangy turpentine
scent of pine, where air crackled
with the sizzling collision of bees,
furred legs grappling velvet bodies
as they mated midair, and where
they came upon the disconsolate gaze
of a Madonna alcoved against
the side of the road, her feet wreathed
in candles, fruit, flowers, and other
offerings. Nearby, a vendor
with a wooden plank balanced between
two folding chairs and the glossy
row of ceramic pigs lined up across,
brilliant glaze shimmering the heat.
My mother fell in love with the red-
and-blue splash of flowers tattooed
into fat flanks and bellies, the green
arabesques of stem and leaf circling
hoof, snout, and ear. So exotic.
Years later she still describes the pig
with a sigh—heartbroken, the word
she chooses with careful consideration.
She’d filled the pig with Kennedy dollars
from the grocery budget, each half dollar
a small luxury denied at the local
Piggly Wiggly, until one day, jingling
the shift and clink of the pig’s
growing silver weight, she shook
too hard, and as if the hoarded wealth
of her future were too much to contain,
the pig broke open—spilling coins
like water, a cold shiny music, into her lap—
fragments of bright pottery shards
scattering delicate as Easter eggshell.
3. Sneeze
My mother sneezes in Japanese. Ké-sho!
An exclamation of surprise—two sharp
crisp syllables before pulling out
the neatly folded and quartered tissue
she keeps tucked inside the wrist
of her sweater sleeve. Sometimes,
when ragweed blooms, I wonder why
her sneeze isn’t mine, why something
so involuntary, so deeply rooted
in the seed of speech, breaks free from
my mouth like thistle in a stiff breeze,
in a language other than my mother’s
tongue. How do you chart the diaspora
of a sneeze? I don’t know how
you turned out this way, she always
tells me, and I think that we are each
her own moon—one face in shadow,
undisclosed seas and surprising mountains,
rotating in the circular music
of separate spheres, but held in orbit
by the gravitational muscle
of the same mercurial spinning heart.
4. Dalmatian
There is an art to this. To shish
kebab the varnished pit of avocado
on three toothpicks above a pickle jar
of cool water, tease down the pale
thirsty hairs of root until one sinewy
arm punches up and unclenches its green
fisted hand, palm open, to the sun.
To discern the oniony star-struck
subterfuge of bulbs, their perverse
desires, death-like sleeps, and conspire
behind the scenes to embroider
the Elizabethan ruffles and festoons
of their flamboyant resurrections.
To trick the tomatoes into letting down
their swelling, tumescent orbs
in the cottony baked heat of the attic
until their sunburnt faces glow
like round orange lanterns under
the crepuscular twilight of the eaves.
Unwrapping the cuttings of succulents
from their moist, paper-towel bandages,
and snugging them down into firm
dimples of dirt and peat, coaxing up
the apple-green serpentine coils of sweet
pea with a snake charmer’s song to wind
around the trellis and flicker their quick
pink-petaled tongues. The tender slips
of mint, sueded upturned bells of petunia,
and slim fingers of pine that pluck
the metal window screen like a tin harp
by the breakfast nook where my father
stirs his morning coffee and waits
for the neighbors’ Dalmatian to hurl
itself over the back fence and hang,
limply twisting and gasping on the end
of its chain and collar like a polka-dotted
petticoat, until my father goes outside
and takes its baleful kicking weight
in his arms and gently tosses it back
over the fence into the neighbors’ yard.
Year after year, the dandelions
and clover are weeded out, summers
come and go, and roots stubbornly inch
down around the foundation of the house—
labyrinthine, powerful and deep.
5. Japanese Apple
She was given an apple on the plane,
round and fragrant with the scent
of her grandfather’s fruit orchards
during autumn, when chestnuts
dropped from their trees and struck
the metal rooftop like the small heavy
tongues of bells, and black dragon-
flies like quick shiny needles darted
in and out of the spin and turn
of leaves fluttering down like soft
bright scraps of silk. She wrapped
the apple in a napkin to save
for later, and it was confiscated
at customs before she had the chance
for even a taste. Over the years it
seemed to grow larger, yellower, juicier
and more delicious, and even though
there were burnished rows of apples
stacked in gleaming pyramids
at the supermarket with quaint
names like Macintosh, Winesap,
and Granny Smith, and even though
there were sunlit apple orchards
at my American grandfather’s ranch,
where rattlesnakes slumbered
in the heat and redolence of fruit
flesh, frightening the horses,
she sampled one after another,
but they never tasted as sweet
or as bright as the apple taken from her,
the one she had to leave behind.
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