Jake Fournier
(1989) creció en Harborcreek, Pensilvania, EEUU. Más tarde estudió Literatura Inglesa y Americana en la Universidad de Nueva York y realizó algún taller de poesía. Actualmente vive en Abu Dhabi como profesor de inglés y planea volver a los Estados Unidos para estudiar un máster de literatura.
JAKE FOURNIER is a Pennsylvanian. A graduate of New York University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has published poems in Lana Turner, Meridian, Petri Press, and elsewhere. This year, he will be working as a language assistant near Versailles, France.
Estaría bien haberlo perdido todo.
Las coristas, los bailarines.
Estoy vestido en exceso por la sangre de mi nariz en la ópera.
Mi vida : un derroche de dinero :: Año bisiesto : febrero.
(Entendí mal la respuesta)
Ser un estudiante de aprobado es lo que merezco
por esforzarme tanto. Alivio. El mar.
Así de simple, lo merezco.
El mar está lleno de olas y de otras cosas.
Moluscos y anémonas, caracolas, naufragios, profundidad,
textos perdidos que puedo leer mientras espero a los estudiantes del océano.
“Lo que deberíamos esperar”, oigo, “es que sean incapaces de procesar respuestas que no contengan un ‘correcto’ o 'incorrecto’”, pero el océano subestima a sus chicos.
*Esta traducción del inglés original ha sido realizada por Julio Fuertes y revisada por Luna Miguel.
El criadero
Gente que descansa sobre la hierba amarilla
como enormes pomelos pudriéndose en la piscifactoría,
mientras, en el horizonte, el ejército de mudanzas U-Haul
amenaza con meterlos a todos en cajas.
Andrew Weatherhead está sentado río abajo
en la playa donde Dottie
pescó el lucio más grande que jamás he visto
y raspó la piel de escamas irisadas
sobre la copa de cristal de su caleidoscopio.
En el visor: un molinete que, cuando gira,
muestra un dirigible soviético con motores Octagon,
los hechos que ocurrieron en mi vida la semana pasada,
y Dottie gritando emocionada en un bar de algún punto
de mi futuro. En un bar cualquiera
para arder en la hoguera de la fiera mirada Tecumseh
del General Sherman, mientras mudanzas U-Haul,
una caja sobre ruedas, quema gasolina
sobre los fragmentos esmeralda que se han hecho un hueco entre
la carne del lucio -porque seguimos mirando
por el visor, y las escamas se adhieren
a los dedos de los amantes como tabaco húmedo
en la caja color rubí con destellos de amarillo Cornelia.
Lo siento,
los incontables amantes follando en las incontables cajas
apiladas cerca del criadero en el depósito de cajas.
Es un momento oportuno para apartar la mirada
y contemplar la tarde, hexagonal, flotando
su dosel de seis caras. La tarde
sujeta la mano que queda del atardecer
con el brazo que le falta. Mientras ellos bailan,
se repiten los días, girando dulcemente la veleta
que, en la granja y en mi sueño, es una flecha
con boca de lubina y cola de pez
hecha del más fino acero Strom Thurmond
pero tan oxidada que sus bisagras revelan
los nombres de los dioses nórdicos ocultos en los días de la semana
al oído de los perros. Por ejemplo di Woden:
trueno. Di Thor. Lo siento, pero da gusto
decir cosas con el telón de fondo
de una lluvia amortiguada, decir cosas imprecisas
porque ya entiendes lo que quiero decir.
Ocurrió esta semana
mientras dormíamos, pero ahora, despiertos,
en el sillón de cuero negro, la taza verde
moteada de ocre en mi otra mano
y la marca de Earl Gray en la mesita,
es mucho mejor. Estar despierto es maravilloso,
sobre todo al principio, porque dormir es la muerte.
Vomit: Antología de poesía joven norteamericana (El Gaviero Ediciones, Almería, 2013, selecc. de Luna Miguel, versión de Mario Amadas).
Masquerade
The dipper drinks the darkened broth.
A friend’s drunken silhouette has cut
Through the anonymity of the crowd.
The other stars like shade
And warping shadow on a scrim
Collect the minds of the disinterested
Whose smoke escapes the masquerade.
Not what we are, but that we’re not
Ourselves, achieves an evening of affect
And musky color palette: crimson, black.
“And does he wear a mask?”
The moon, our hostess, loves the wit
While her husband twirls his mustache as if
Its being real could counteract.
A feather in a knot of hair
Funnels attention from a low-backed dress.
As a mask activates when worn or egress
Transforms a set of stairs
The mind requires this pinion there
Or interest dissolves in atmosphere;
In plumage, one plume despairs.
Narcissus Unless Echo
I am drawn to that clear stream
stretching thataway.
I submerge my face in it
with open eyes—
What are these translucent fish
that flagellate against the current?
I am afraid, but not of time.
I am alone temporarily—
pistols, skiffs, the propane heater
in the hunting shack
where I spine-shot a doe
and her front legs flailed,
dragging her second-half
like a roller-suitcase
through the cattails.
I blotted her hound-like ear
a second time, and, when I
lowered the white-bead,
it still wasn’t there. Where
Mennonites are chasing
golf balls beyond the trees,
this is the song they sing:
We see the sisters’ caps above the weeds,
eleven seasons’ strange variety.
The smith forgives the lorgnette’s sting
and silence plates the jewelry.
What am I thinking?
A man slit from the larynx,
half his ribcage over
each flank, his arms
hanging stirrup-like.
Of this time I was on a horse
at the Crawford Fair and the horse
got on its knees.
Danger—
I felt nothing when I read
the sign. I wanted to swim
by the dam there and I did
and nothing came of it.
Aspects of Flights
We are more or less the difference between us, I kneel.
You look down on me, unknowingly,
one of many congregating in the midnight gorges
and zinc jags streaming beneath you and the blonde
Lufthansa girl dispensing juices. She drifts through
the isle, stenciling
her pillbox hat onto your fondest memories before you turn away
again, wanting more. The earth below is otherworldly;
Alps smack the eye.
Literally outdoors, the room is addressing
a triangular
horse when you arrive, “Though it might seem hopeless
to find a comfortable arrangement between your banal
pursuits, Zodiacal warnings, Gemütlichkeit, and self-regard
we see nature
sometimes provides a solution in strato-cumulo patterning
on the white sky.” It directs as best it can a speedy
removal of these
life-size props, grinding the horizon into time. Somewhere
in the treeless wastes, another airplane’s shadow skips—we’re
in it. Starlight dives splashless into daytime.
Filled with the sands of the Rub al Khali,
my Onasakus dimple the desert floor. It whips a dune
buggy hood with
sheets while Ud drones from the open passenger
door. Through its window, you see al Liwa’s coign
advancing. You
hike your abaya and book to the truth, Khulood. Your lips—Allure Laque in Dragon
smearing stoplight like a river—purse. The desert
makes flats of your pumps. You want to drive, you say. O come on,
Jake, 180
kilometers ocean, degrees vision. It’s this kind
of material thinking thought,
balking to be acted, triggering regret, insists.
You stoke the fantasy by doing nothing. Headlong the awkward
seeking you meant to avoid, dowels,
tape, old grocery
bag, fishing wire—cut a diamond shape and cross the dowels between
the cardinal directions—good. Now, with the wind in your face, increase
the undertow velocity by kicking your legs violently out, left, right,
etc., shooting
the date trees back in that time
you spent—was it running? This tugging at your hands is
a simulation of the resistance meeting the deep-sea
submersible’s robotic claws. Boring into the dark entrance
in the cruise ship’s plated hall, the spotlight beams are stiff
as sheet metal. You exhale. The dust you see is embedded
8 inches in the glass.
A Hoof for the Vagabond
Something about the gun was off, we grew up
thinking and promised that much and that aimlessness to ruin
a sitting room, sans divan or stool, that’s something
like the great outdoors with hedges
creasing the yards
fielding a tree between whose elbows something ripens like a question.
Time hadn’t passed, just some was missing,
not that that prevented me when driving down
from seeing freshly how little I could at night.
The houses and shrubs were drywall for wallpaper darkness.
The darkness concealed denser foliage,
the long hemlock needles
massaging pinecones into obscurity—things I’d seen already
in a dress rehearsal for the present.
And the meaning to tell you, as I meant to say
goes beyond what’s said
to teach that density and that freedom to mean
our leaving’s what the trees have seen to,
themselves and tomorrow. Even emptiness
has a backdrop, which, though you expected everything,
is spare.
You came down, woke up over an hour,
said this should have happened before
as it has to other people,
people who hold you awkwardly sometimes and who, others, stand away
thinking how you’ll fail
those whom nameless lackings made want you
and those, telling time by what flowers are still living—
now irises, now violets—whom you take inside,
and whose velleities, unknown to themselves,
appear to gather into a wall,
an apparent willingness shaped inside a cloud.
Cross country,
men are ballooning over yellower,
more dilapidated Pennsylvanias. I’d find it alien
if it weren’t that my father used to sponsor one
(Fournier Construction). We were chasers once—
With camouflage
binoculars pressed to the windshield,
we pursued ours like a memory past its purpose
to the farmhouse where it bent to stripe the field.
“The Devil’s Horse!”
the farmers joked. Alfalfa and rye
in the silos, the farm had invited its neighbors and, when we got there, us
to sweetcorn. The waxier, yellow-white strains—
Sugar & Gold, Double Standard—
were through. They were on to Country Gentleman
and Argent. (Thinking about it, I feel butter
on my chin.) Of course we knew each other then,
but we were my family in this stanza,
Phil. I hope it’s clear by now I want this to change
you, that there are reasons, looks, touches
you apply to patience thinning the life in every gesture
you make, and though each seems it’s being made then, before whomever, original,
you bear them like departures; if they give
you an innocent air—an opal if—
you are a die—uncertain until the instant shows
you natural tendencies not overmastered by
the advantages of contempt for doing without.
The afternoon is over Gospel Hill watching the sun into Canada.
My shadow abandons its stilts at the edge of a barn.
It’s been converted since—
I’m sure this time it will be easy.
The latest leavings, the drones who needled from the wainscot in March,
returned eager for the weather to begin.
We follow then,
exploiting loopholes, listening.
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