Danielle DeTiberus
Danielle DeTiberus vive en Charleston, Carolina del Sur, donde imparte clases de escritura creativa en la Escuela de las Artes de Charleston . Tiene un BFA de la Universidad Emerson y un MFA de El Programa de Baja Residencia del solsticio en Pine Manor College.
Sherman Alexie selecciona su poema “In a Black Tank Top” para su inclusión en Best American Poetry 2015. En 2016, recibió el Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship en poesía, de la Academia de Carolina del Sur de Autores. Su poema “Turtleneck” aparecerá en la próxima antología de Nahr por Les Femmes Folles Libros. En 2012, sus poemas “I Thought After Thirty” y “Love and Other Hand Grenades” ganaron el Premio Dubose y Dorothy Heyward Sociedad y el Premio Jane Moran, respectivamente, a través de la sociedad de poesía de Carolina del Sur (PSSC). Su poema "Like That" fue elegido por Mark Doty como Mención de honor para el 2009 Arts & Letters Premio de Poesía de Rumi.
Su trabajo ha aparecido en Mead, Rattle, The Southeast Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, y en otros lugares. Actualmente se desempeña como PSSC del Presidente del Programa, con lo invita a poetas de renombre nacional a Charleston para lecturas y seminarios.
En camisola negra
En su camisola
negra mi m a c h o
tiene la autoridad
pa’ decir casi, casi
cualquier cosa. Cosas
como, vamos a ver el fútbol
o este camarón está muy cocido o veamos
cuántas dominadas puedo hacer. En su camisola
negra, es quince años más joven, semejante a
aquellos chicos tontos que conocí en la escuela.
Cuando llega a casa después de jugar baloncesto,
deseo serpentear en el camastro de la estropeada
camioneta roja de sus padres y revolcarnos hasta
que su poca-barba, rasguñe tanto mis mejillas y
mi garganta que deje marcas moteadas pa’ que
amigos las contemplen por varios días. En su
camisola negra, podría mirarlo hablar de vigas,
viguetas y cerchas por horas pues las sombras de
su brazo se estrujan sobre el algodón acanalado
como un chico aprieta su chica contra el casillero
de acero, recio antes que inicie la clase de la Sra.
Toner. Quisiera gritarle, ¡Caray! Eso parece algo
que debería ser ilegal. Luego, Compárteme un
trozo de eso. Pero prefiero ser esa cosita tímida,
sonrío y me sonrojo como todas las niñas buenas.
En su camisola negra mi macho siempre me hace
ofrecerle una mano pa’ quitársela. Ahora tiembla:
es primera vez que el chico desata un cinturón real.
traducida por el poeta y traductor Alain Pallais.
In a black tank top
In a black tank-top
my man can say
just about anything.
Stuff like, let’s watch
football, or this shrimp
is overcooked or see how many pull-ups I
can do. In a black tank-top, he looks fifteen
years younger, looks like all those silly boys
I knew in school. When he gets home from
playing ball, I want to crawl inside the bed
of his parents’ beat-up red pick-up truck &
make out until his almost-beard scratches
at me, leaves dappled marks on my cheeks
& throat for friends to stare at for days. In a
black tank-top, I can watch him talk about
beams, joists, & trusses for hours ‘cause the
shadows of his arm press against the ribbed
cotton like a boy presses a girl up against a
steely locker, hard before Mrs. Toner’s home
room. I want to shout, Damn, son! Looking
like that should be illegal. And, Break me off
some of that. Instead I try to be the shy little
thing, smile & blush like the good girls do. In
a black tank-top, though, my man always gets
me to offer a hand to pull it off. He trembles:
a boy undoing his first real belt.
Danielle DeTiberus
Shock
She was a ghost, of course, and trying
to love her was like sliding a knife into
a socket. There must’ve been something
there: a coin jammed inside the slot
from an attempted phone call long ago,
a piece of string leading to the bare
attic bulb—an illumination, a spark.
He wanted her to know him, to feel
the zap that jolts forgotten secrets,
familiar names. He was the skilled child,
steadying metal against a Wish Bone,
Butterflies in Stomach, a Broken Heart.
The danger of a closed circuit: two
becoming one again. Each the other’s
ghost, both riddling out how to return
or finally escape. A woman who cannot
remember; a man who’s no one’s son.
The Chorus
Seventeen years worth of aerating
and waiting: a million untraceable
sirens. From my porch, it sounds like the howl
of winter gales: a pre-solstice storm
born underground. Everywhere,
now, they lilt and crisp on telephone poles,
on the side of the road. Swarms above my head
pay no attention. Even the birds have stopped
singing in the morning. Cicadas call, flash
orange-veined wings, small scarves
out of the magician’s hat. The tar outside
my house is pockmarked with rot. The dying
look for bark next to the empty shells
of last week’s nymphs. The lucky cling
there, like martyrs in an ancestral graveyard,
in the midst of all the unholy business
of barbeques, the mailman, and the Monarchs.
Next month, after they have all died, I will go
back to listening to the radio, or to silence.
No more trace of raucous breathing. The ground
will swallow them up again in one
slow, hot inhale. A final act
of sorcery. The trees mark this year
with a rich, wide ring. Soil sweetened by this
resource, this rapid pulse of life. Thumb-sized
shaman who come up from tunnels and roots
to remind us again—just when we begin to forget
it’s possible—how to die gracefully, and in chorus.
Love and Other Hand Grenades
Love’s mess is as explosive as
survival—spark violent as ripe
pomegranates bursting seeds in fall.
Some days I hate that I love you
this much. It’d be easier, prettier if I could
pack up my books, leave
the cats and cast iron pans behind.
Stuck to the fridge a note without
punctuation about traveling on. How would I
look as a wanderer? My hair long,
smelling of someone else’s musk. The girl
with a hundred lovers: a brunette Joni Mitchell
without the dulcimer. The lives
we have to murder for each choice. Or
imagine we must because there’s no way to know
otherwise. Each day a fuse
sizzling towards detonation. We throw
sparks to one another like flirtations, like
dares. Save the biggest blasts
for the ones we know will put us back
together again. This is why we’re so
fragmented. Why it’s so exhausting to stay
in love. The real thing—not
the passion of battle. But the bandaging, the salve.
To love you this way is to keep our wounds
fresh. To toss our fragile shells
back and forth, like mistaking
a grenade for a hot potato. No surprise that
we long for the same feeling we run from.
Here are my insides, love. Promise to make me
whole. I am the wounded that needs to be
fixed. You are both doctor and enemy.
You’ve seen the places I cannot look.
It is hardest to be loved this way—and to love as if
there were no end. A gesture against extinction:
a hand bearing fruit, sowing fire in the holes.
.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario