ROSS GAY [17.835]

Ross Gay 

Nació en Youngstown, Ohio. Es autor de Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), libro finalista del National Book Award; Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); y Against Which (Cavankerry Press, 2006). También ha publicado los chapbooks Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens (en co-autoría con Aimee Nezhukumatathil) y River (en co-autoría con Richard Wehrenberg, Jr.). Ross Gay obtuvo la Maestría en Poesía del Sarah Lawrence College y el Doctorado en Inglés de la Universidad de Temple. Actualmente es profesor en la Universidad de Indiana.

OBRA:

Against Which. CavanKerry Press. October 2006. ISBN 978-1-933880-00-6.

Bringing the Shovel Down. University of Pittsburgh Press. 23 January 2011. ISBN 978-0-8229-9119-9.

Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens,. Organic Weapon Arts. 2014. ISBN 978-0-9827106-7-8.

River. Monster House Press. 1 December 2014.

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. University of Pittsburgh Press. 16 January 2015. ISBN 978-0822963318.

Cuando después de algún tiempo, finalmente, 

sus hijos están con su papá

es ser hundido en esta inmundicia

empuñado empalado este ahogo este lodo

este kung fu jalando tanga 

este reptil pre culeada

de sorbos gruñidos

chillidos siseos

nuestros ojos idos extraños y vaporosos

nuestros dientes se retuercen en encías

relámpago en nuestras espaldas se arquea

cuando pongo a leer mi lengua a través de ti

los garabatos se arrastran por paredes escarpadas de tu cráneo

un poco como chupar sesos

pero más literario

tengo miedo que te esté haciendo daño

y parar mi flujo

pero dices por favor no

y muerdes un agujero en mi garganta

a través del cual la luna

desabrocha su sombrero de hueso

sumerge seca

y sorbe

dentro del pantano que hemos hecho

de nuestra miseria.

(Traducción de Giancarlo Huapaya)

When After Some Time, Finally,

Your Kids are at Their Dad’s

is to be sunk in this muck-

fisted tussle this must this mud

this panty-yanking kung-fu

this reptile pre-fuck

of slurps and growls

of grunts and hisses

our eyes gone weird and filmy

our teeth squirming in our gums

the lightning writhing off our backs

and when I put my tongue

through you to read with it

the scrawl crawling your skull’s craggy walls

which is kind of like

sucking your brains out

but more literary

I get scared I’m hurting you and stop

but you say please don’t

and bite a hole in my throat

through which the moon

unbuckling her bonnet of bone

plunges parched

and slurping

into the swamp we’ve made

of our want.

Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew

 Today, November 28th, 2005, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

I am staring at my hands in the common pose

of the hungry and penitent. I am studying again

the emptiness of my clasped hands, wherein I see

my sister-in-law days from birthing 

the small thing which will erase,

in some sense, the mystery of my father’s departure;

their child will emerge with ten fingers,

and toes, howling, and his mother will hold

his gummy mouth to her breast and the stars

will hang above them and not one bomb

will be heard through that night. And my brother will stir,

waking with his wife the first few days, and he will run

his long fingers along the soft terrain of his child’s skull

and not once will he cover the child’s ears

or throw the two to the ground and cover them

from the blasts. And this child will gaze

into a night which is black and quiet.

She will pull herself up to her feet

standing like a buoy in wind-grooved waters,

falling, and rising again, never shaken

by an explosion. And her grandmother

will watch her stumble through a park or playground,

will watch her sail through the air on swings,

howling with joy, and never once

will she snatch her from the swing and run

for shelter because again, the bombs are falling.

The two will drink cocoa, the beautiful lines 

in my mother’s face growing deeper as she smiles

at the beautiful boy flipping the pages of a book

with pictures of dinosaurs, and no bomb

will blast glass into this child’s face, leaving

the one eye useless. No bomb will loosen the roof,

crushing my mother while this child sees

plaster and wood and blood where once his Nana sat.

This child will not sit with his Nana, killed by a bomb,

for hours. I will never drive across two states

to help my brother bury my mother this way. To pray

and weep and beg this child to speak again.

She will go to school with other children,

and some of them will have more food than others,

and some will be the witnesses of great crimes,

and some will describe flavors with colors, and some

will have seizures, and some will read two grade

levels ahead, but none of them will tip their desks

and shield their faces, nor watch as their teacher

falls out of her shoes, clinging to the nearest child. 

This child will bleed 

and cry and curse his living parents

and slam doors and be hurt and hurt again. And she will feel

clover on her bare feet. Will swim in frigid waters.

Will climb trees and spy cardinal chicks blind

and peeping. And no bomb will kill this child’s parents. 

No bomb will kill this child’s grandparents. No bomb

will kill this child’s uncles. And no bomb will kill

this child, who will raise to his mouth

some small morsel of food of which there is more

while bombs fall from the sky like dust

brushed from the hands of a stupid god and children

whose parents named them will become dust 

and their parents will drape themselves in black

and dream of the tiny mouths which once reared

to suckle or gasp at some bird sailing by

and their tears will make a mud which will heal nothing, 

and today I will speak no word

except the name of that child whose absence

makes the hands of her parents shiver. A name

which had a meaning. 

As will yours. 

                                                  —for Mikayla Grace

To My Best Friend’s Big Sister

One never knows

does one

how one comes to be

standing

most ways to naked

in front of one’s pal’s

big sister who has, simply

by telling me to,

gotten me to shed

all but the scantest

flap of fabric

and twirl before her

like a rotisserie

chicken as she

observes

and offers thoughtful critique

of my just

pubescent physique

which is not

a thing

to behold

what with my damp trunks

clinging to

my damp crotch

and proportion and grace

are words the definition

of which I don’t yet know

nor did I ask the

the mini-skirted scientist

sitting open-legged

and now shoeless

on my mom’s couch

though it may have been

this morning

while chucking papers

I heard through the Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock

pulsing my walkman

a mourning

dove struggling

snared in the downspout’s

mouth and without

lowering the volume

or missing a verse

I crinkled the rusted aluminum

trap enough that with

a little wriggle

it was free

and did not

at once

wobble to some

powerline but sat on my hand

and looked at me

for at least

one verse of “It Takes Two”

sort of bobbing

its head

and cooing once or twice

before flopping off

but that seems very long ago

now

as I pirouette

my hairless and shivering

warble of acne and pudge

burning a hole

in the rug as big sis tosses off

Greek and Latin words

like pectorals and

gluteus maximus

standing to show me

what she means

with her hands on my love

handles and now

I can see myself

trying to add some gaudy flourish

to this memory

to make of it

a fantasy

which is why I linger

hoping to mis-recall

the child

me

make of me

someone I wasn’t

make of this

experience the beginning

of a new life

gilded doors

kicked open blaring

trombones a full

beard Isaac Hayes singing in the background

and me thundering forth

on the wild steed

of emergent manhood

but I think this child was not

that child

obscuring, as he was, his breasts

by tucking his hands

into his armpits

and having never even made love

to himself

yet was not

really a candidate for much

besides the chill

of a minor shame

that he would forget for 15 years

one of what would prove

to be many

such shames

stitched together like a quilt

with all its just legible

patterning which could be a thing

heavy and warm

to be buried in

or instead might be held up

to the light

where we see the threads

barely holding

so human and frail

so beautiful and sad and small

from this remove.

For Some Slight I Can’t Quite Recall

 Was with the pudgy hands of a thirteen-year-old

that I took the marble of his head

just barely balanced on his reedy neck

and with the brute tutelage

of years fighting the neighbor kids

and too the lightning of my father’s

stiff palm I leaned the boy’s head

full force into the rattly pane of glass

on the school bus and did so with the eagle of justice

screaming in my ear as he always does

for the irate and stupid I made the window sing

and bend and the skinny boy too

whose eyes grew to lakes lit by mortar fire

bleating with his glasses crooked

I’m not an animal walking in place

on the green vinyl seat looking far away

and me watching him and probably almost smiling

at the song and dance I made of the weak

and skinny boy who towering above me

became even smaller and bizarre and birdlike

pinned and beating his wings frantically

against his cage and me probably

almost smiling as is the way of the stupid

and cruel watching the weak and small

and innocent not getting away.

.