Jotabê

(poema pro Jorge Bandeira no aniversário 52 dele, 23/ABR/2020)

Jotabê, Jotabê, quem é Jotabê?

É um homem que veio do igarapé.

E é para lá que deseja voltar?

Tanto faz – ele mora no mesmo lugar.

Jotabê, Jotabê, como é Jotabê?

É um homem nuinho da cabeça ao pé.

E o que ele põe quando se tem que tapar?

Se veste de versos, de sol e de ar.

Jotabê, Jotabê, o que faz Jotabê?

Ele faz é desenhos e livros e play.

Não é no teatro que vai ensaiar?

No palco ele brinca e ensina sonhar.

Jotabê, Jotabê, o que diz Jotabê?

Ele diz que o mundo é nem que você.

E isso, o que pode significar?

Sei lá. Quer saber? Vá com ele falar!

Kitchen Cosmos

The following post was published last month as my contribution to the blog for the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, where I am a fellow this year for the seminar on food.

Pots and pans, mortars and pestles, pitchers, whisks, knives: the implements for processing, cooking, and storing food represent some of the most elemental and yet creative of human inventions. Because of their familiarity through daily use, these utensils sometimes even become characters in legends, or the focus of certain traditions, of the kind my students and I examine and analyze in the Latin American Cultures course.

In Popol Vuh, the cosmology of the Quiché Maya, cooking tools famously rebel against their masters. The creation story relates that the gods needed three tries to create humankind. In the first attempt, the mud-sculpted proto-humans fell apart. In the second attempt, the mannequin-like figures made of wood could walk and talk, but they had neither heart nor mind, and could not recognize kindness and respect. They were punished by the gods, by their own dogs and turkeys (animals that were eaten), and even by their cooking utensils:

Then the grinding stones said this to them: “We were ground upon by you. Every day, every day, in the evening and at dawn, always you did holi, holi, huki, huki on our faces. This was our service for you who were the first people. But this day you shall feel our strength. We shall grind you like maize. We shall grind up your flesh,” said their grinding stones to them.

Then spoke also their griddles and their pots to them: “Pain you have caused us. Our mouths and our faces are sooty. You were forever throwing us upon the fire and burning us. Although we felt no pain, you now shall try it. We shall burn you,” said all of their pots. Thus their faces were all crushed. (76-77, trans. Christenson)

The mannequins were eventually drowned, and those few who survived became the monkeys.

The third try was the charm: humans were successfully amassed out of different colors of corn dough. In general terms, Mesoamerican belief systems hold that people are made of corn, and corn is kin. Even today there are those who believe that to sell corn is to sell one’s cousin, sibling, or parent–the same failure to recognize kindness and respect that doomed the wooden people.

El diluvio y la destrucción de los hombres de palo. Diego Rivera

Caribbean and Amazonian cosmologies tend to feature gourds as womb-like containers of treasured abundance. In Taino myth, for example, the ocean and all its fish are born from a dropped calabash when Deminán and his brothers try to return the gourd to its safe perch in the clouds. Cuban writer Antonio José Ponte, in his essay collection Las comidas profundas, writes of a tradition in eastern Cuba in which a gourd or a jug is kept in a secure spot out of the sun and away from animals, to be gradually filled with fruits as they come into season over the nine months of a mother’s pregnancy:

Poco a poco, entre el espíritu de la botella, figuración de Las Mil y Una Noches, y el espíritu del niño esperado, empieza a establecerse una relación muy estrecha. Todo lo dulce a la redonda, toda carne de fruta entra a la matriz de vidrio para componer un doble, un niño de tierra. La barriga de la madre y la del botellón se vuelven fermentaciones gemelas (48).

[Little by little, between the spirit of the bottle, allegory of A Thousand and One Nights, and the spirit of the expected child, a very close relationship begins to be established. All that is sweet from the surrounding area, all flesh of fruit enters into the womb of glass to create a double, a child of the earth. The belly of the mother and the belly of the jug become twin fermentations.] (my trans.)

The resulting mixture, a sangría-like drink called aliñado, is imbibed to celebrate the baby’s birth, or even stored much longer and fermented further as the child grows.

These mythological and ritual examples from the Americas blur the lines among humans, food, and food preparation utensils, as co-actors in one environment, to demonstrate an ancient truth: we are not only what we eat or drink, but also the embodied practice of how we prepare and consume it.

Coloquio que sostuvieron el rincón y la esquina

Don Marcos del Rincón dijo,

"Si me acerco a la ventana,

a Tránsito de la Esquina

veré, ella que siempre pasa

husmeando y rezongando

por la puerta de mi casa

a esta hora, cuando amanece,

porque le comen las ansias

de saber mis novedades. 

Por eso, mejor me alcanza

la cortina, aquí adentro,

que, de tela oscura, tapa

mi cuerpo pero no mi oído. 

Ella quiere vistas anchas; 

yo, prefiero lo cuadrado.

Anhelo las cosas cerradas. 

Cada cosa su función,

cada cosa en su lugar. 

Aquí esperaré escondido

a escuchar su lengua mala."

Dijo doña Tránsito de la Esquina al

pasar por la ventana del Sr. Rincón,

"Ay, cómo me fastidia el ruco chismoso

que aquí vive. Nunca sale, apenas asoma

la nariz, y más bien se hace el desaparecido

detrás de su cortina. Se imagina que vengo con escándalos a contar,

cuando tan sólo me hago llegar a ver si está bien,

como quien

se cuida de un amigo, pues. Así que, 

don Marcos, hágase ver, que le traje noticias del mundo de afuera." 

"Aléjese, señora,
porque de sus malas mañas
no quiero yo ni saber.
Desvíe su caminata
a pasar por otras calles
y dejar de molestar."
Mientras lo dijo don Marcos,
no pudo dejar de espiarla.

"Ni que lo estuviera importunando,
don Marcos, no sea Ud. tan pesado. Mire que
está Ud. pálido. La brisa fresca del mar
le hace falta, y el buen beso
de los rayos del sol."

"¡Tengo la salud de un oso!
¡Qué de rayos ni qué nada!
Más bien Ud., doña Tránsito,
luce bastante quemada.
¿No será que tanto sol
le quita todas las ganas
de pensar con su sano juicio?
Su mente ya no está clara."

"¡Uf! Cuide lo que dice, don Marcos, no vaya
a ser que Ud. sea el más indicado para
señalar con dedo ajeno." Doña Tránsito le guiñó el ojo y prosiguió, "Le haré saber que por lo mismo de que yo sí
salgo y veo las gentes pasar y las nubes pasar y los naves
pasar, yo sí veo bien, todo iluminado por el astro rey, y mi salud es la de
la yegua fuerte que sube y baja por los vericuetos de la ciudad."

"Entonces, ¿por qué delira?
Le escucho pero no me habla
como debe ser, en verso,
con rima y ritmo que entablan.
Si no puede mostrar forma
de romance ni cantata,
sus opiniones e ideas
¿cómo voy yo a respetarlas?"

"¿Forma? También la tiene la ardiente luz del sol cuando se filtra por
el verdor de las hojas del bosque, y toda la escena queda ilustrada, como que de oro impregnada. Forma difícil de asir pero fácil de apreciar. ¿O no lo has visto nunca, don Marcos?"

"En mis libros veo todo.
¿Qué no pueden ilustrar
el arte de los dibujos,
la ciencia de las palabras?
Si se trata de un concepto
que merece muchas páginas,
seré el primero en leerlas.
Así, qué el mundo se me abra."

"Yo creo, señor, que eso que Ud. dice de que quiere que el mundo se le abra, es
realmente lo que Ud. añora. Pero Ud, sólo por empecinado,
digo,
por terco, porfiado, testarudo, obstinado e intransigente,
se niega a ver que el mundo se abre al umbral de su
puerta." Doña Tránsito se ajustó la blusa y la canasta que llevaba, y agregó, "Que pase un buen día, y hasta mañana."

Quedó perplejo don Marcos.
Le respondió, "Hasta mañana,"
refunfuñando entre dientes.
Se puso a pelar naranjas;
pensando en soles y mundos
dejaba caer las cáscaras.
Después volvió a sus romances
de maneras anticuadas
que escribía en puño y letra:
metáforas delicadas
de amores por doña Tránsito.
De repente entró una ráfaga
por la ventana y todo se hizo un caos
de cáscaras y metáforas y hojas sueltas que a don Marcos le costó unas horas
para arreglar, pero se fastidió y salió al muelle
para ver llegar y salir los naves y las nubes y fue entonces que
supo que
un romance es bonito pero que no siempre
lo romántico se confina en su forma.





 

The Writers' Stabbing

            If you know what kind of a thing is a knife, you’re not going to grab it by the wrong end. How will you slice an onion with the handle? More to the point, —ouch—, how will you avoid slicing open your own palm with the blade? Which kind of tears do you want, if any? Knowing how to use a knife means knowing where and when and how to slice.

            Like a knife to an onion, an apostrophe slices a word wide open. The word didn’t, for example, precisely indicates where the o from not was cut, or elided, when the contraction was produced. The scarred misspelling “did’nt,” in contrast, shows a sloppy sliver where none was needed.

            Sometimes we see an apostrophe that reveals who holds the dagger, who possesses what: the student’s sins, the writers’ stabbing. We can even tell how many do the possessing; in these examples, there is one student, and there are more than one writers. To the ear, the student’s sins and the students’ sins and maybe even the student sins all sound the same. If we hear the cut at all, it is only the faint whisper between one s and another as the knife comes unsheathed. But we can see the cut, and a writer who desires clarity of meaning should carve with the precision of the surgeon’s scalpel.

            And yet ignorance of technique leads us to a strange reversal in contemporary English, in which people are given to using the handle for the blade and the blade for the handle, a mangled language of bludgeoned jack-o’-lanterns and punctured doorbells. It seems more common to see, lately, bloody botched procedures such as “Davids Pizzas” where “We have dipping sauce’s.” Plurals don’t need an apostrophe operation any more than pizzas need plastic surgery. And as for David, well, maybe someone is trying to suggest that he dispossess his pizzas. Is this just outright confusion, comparable to a misspelling? Is it the result of dependence on, or ignorance of, software such as Microsoft Word? Does it all stem from the anxiety of that persistent Sword of Damocles, the conundrum of “is it it’s or is it its?” My fearful suspicion is that all of this random slashing replicates the unfocused thrashing-about of a seething, unsettled society whose members do not know where or when or how to show, or to use, their weapons.

            Because an apostrophe is most certainly a weapon, and of the most vastly insidious kind of violence visited upon speakers and readers of the English language. You, writer—you!—you are complicit in Kennedy’s assassination when you give it to him like that, for him to possess, as if anyone wants to possess her or his own murder. This is a fundamentally unethical form of grammatical viciousness that, for as banal and accepted as it is, does not stop being a form of violence that affects the way we think about perpetrators and victims, about crimes and consequences. It is the lazy ease of slurred syllables—the unburdening of not bothering to locate a recycling receptacle; the casual, hurtful chuckle at someone else’s misfortune—that compounds wound over wound and adds up to the death by a thousand cuts. There is always an alternative way to recast the sentence, to subvert the strictures of column width or character count, to slice, if at all, elsewhere: the traitor's crime against the nation, the assassin’s murder of the millionaire, the bombs’ destruction upon the city.

            The writers’ stabbing is the apostrophe’s purpose. At its best, it’s the mark of a clear incision, a graceful stroke, a clever slash’s eye-catching curve. Can you cut it?

BRAZIL vs. MEXICO

There's a lot of me wrapped up in that headline, in many ways! What a great game it was today, one of the most exciting draws you could imagine in what was seen nonetheless as a victory for Mexico. Professionally, I've published more about Brazil than about Mexico. But I've taught more Spanish in my Mexican accent than Portuguese in my Brazilian one. If I were for some reason confined to either of those countries for the rest of my life, I would not care - I would be pleased, and I would feel at home. Such rich cultures, such variety. They are the two poles of what it means for me to be a Latin Americanist.

Because of their sizes, populations, and economies, Brazil and Mexico are the Latin American giants. But more than this, they are the giants of the soccer world. How can this be, if Brazil has won five World Cup championships (the record) while Mexico--though almost always a strong team and one of only a few nations to have hosted the World Cup itself twice--has not yet made it to the Round of Eight? It is because they have the largest populations in the world of soccer fandom. To start with the obvious, we can eliminate the global demographic colossi China, India, and Indonesia, which don't have World Cup-qualifying teams, nor do they seem to have the fan base for them. But what about Argentina? It's also an incredibly soccer-crazed nation with a large territory, yet its population is only slightly more than a third of Mexico's. In the Spanish-speaking world, Colombia and Spain have larger populations than Argentina's, but the two populations together are still shy of Mexico's.

Among the teams at this year's World Cup, it's true that the US, Russia, Nigeria and Japan all have populations greater than Mexico's (but--except the US-- lesser than Brazil's). Still, I would contend that the uniformity of soccer passion across practically all sectors of Mexican society (and including millions of Mexicans in the US) means that the nation as a whole is much more invested in its team than are the Americans, the Russians, the Nigerians, or the Japanese.

What this means is that the particular match BRAZIL vs. MEXICO holds the greatest possible combined national interest among the citizens of the countries whose teams are playing. No wonder it was an exciting game. It probably attracted the largest TV audience of the Group phase matches. Perhaps the teams will meet yet again before this World Cup is over!

Wrap

Flee, thought, across the distance.
runninflyinrunniflyscootrunflyflyscootrunningrunningfly
I will catch you.
And the catching of you will be the knowing, the naming of you.

Because a name you must have.
name thing name signifier name word name name
The speed of the whirling dust in your wake as you pursue the horizon,
cloud of plumes scooting at an attainable height,
I will match with my gallop.

Let your name be... ñandú.
ñandú ñandú ñandú rhea
And mine will be gaucho.
And with my shoulder I raise my arm, I swing that with which
I will apprehend you:
three weighted ropes of different lengths, joined at one end.
ora bolas bolas bolas
With these I will capture you.
I will attain and retain and ascertain you,
thought with the heft and hurl of a
rhea.

Even as you flee I have cast my stones:
ora bolas bolas bolas
one to circumscribe you quickly
your legs
patas
step no more
while the second wraps further round to categorize you
tight
tighter
and the third, the longest, encircles you repeatedly to characterize and contextualize you,
tightest
thought brought down for analysis,
quick squeeze succulent
for dissection
and digestion.

But sometimes you thoughts are best, and most enticing,
when unfettered, scattered
clouds of plumes plumes clouds plumes clouds of plumes
across the pampas
and I
can only perceive you
remotely
with longing for your form.

Yes, that's often best.
Knowing you are out there in space
potential not kinetic
is another way of naming,
of imagining.

Flocks of thoughts roam free
and live and die unknown
until the hunt.

These things I know

These things I know -

these things that have not yet made known to me how to refer to them -

these are the things I summon to this poem. 

 

These things I know –

they know me too.

We know each other.

We know through each other

intimately. 

Things known so deeply that memory alone does not attain:

the viscera, the nucleus store them,

but they store these things less than they

are these things. 

 

I cannot take them for granted, these things,

because they act, through me, with me, every moment. 

Even to perceive the use or disuse of these things

is for me to act through these things. 

 

These things I know -

how do I know them?

I read them I laugh them I smell them I eat them

I cry them I squeeze them I hide them

I find them...

 

Maybe these things I know are really one big thing,

and that is the thing about which the ceaseless cycle of learning

is also the act of living. 

 

tarareo

Tarareo
porque sí.

Tarareo,
¿por qué no?

Tarareo
porque así me hago vibrar:
el músico, la música,
y el instrumento de cuerdas
es uno mismo.

Tarareo
una intensidad variable
como un arco-iris de ondas.

Tarareo
tan sólo porque el ronroneo
me es ajeno de especie.

Tarareo
porque así manifesto el bienestar
o bien
ahuyento el malestar.

Tarareo
así como quien come con delicia
y bebe con astucia
y enamora con caricia
todo simultáneo como un acorde
como un acuerdo
entre un corazón y dos pulmones.

Tarareo
porque las palabras engañan.
Si fuera posible,
tararearía
este poemmmmmmmmmmma.

The shape of your palm

There is no geography

like the shape of a palm,

like the particular map of what is a palm,

to convey to the practiced soothsayer

the angle of the thumb's rays

the direction of the prevailing fingers

the lifelines of high tide flush,

each jointed frond opposing,

thirsty for life, 

splayed to best caress the light

even as the winds spin their prints and whorls 

and something like the bark of a tree 

grows rough

and grows

 hewn.

There is no cartography

like the shadow of a palm,

when it gestures, when it dances

in the splashed moon,

in the heaving tide sucked and spit,

in the celestial hand

to which it clings, it 

cleaves,

for dear

life. 

La hipérbole ridícula de una bala

¿Cómo responder a una masacre como la de Sandy Hook, una masacre que es una, y también una masacre más?

En su magistral cuento "La estampida," sobre la represión militar, escribió la autora uruguaya Cristina Peri Rossi del

sentimiento de piedad por tantas anécdotas truncas, por tantas biografías de pronto segadas, rasgadas, interrumpidas por la hipérbole ridícula de una bala [...] por todos los idilios bruscamente suspendidos, por las casas vacías, por los muebles abandonados, los niños huérfanos [...]

y la frase que no me abandona, la imagen que se niega a soltarme, es aquella de

la hipérbole ridícula de una bala.

la hipérbole ridícula de una bala

cuando el cuerpo es un cosmos 

y la vida un cielo, un viento, un río

y hay momentos en que nos percibimos 

como parte de una totalidad infinita

pero hay momentos cuando nos perecemos

de tanta hostilidad desacertada

de tanta violencia implacable

y basta una bala

hasta una bala

basta

bala

como para acabar una cosmografía

cada cabeza un mundo

cada esencia su espíritu

y no nacemos con armadura antibalas

nacemos vulnerables

desnudos

así como debemos vivir

porque la vulnerabilidad

es poder

y la bala

es despoder

deshacer

desvivir

destruir

la bala

en el blanco

es la negación

hiperbólica

hiperbálica

y ridícula

del futuro

El que teme el futuro

se desespera

y dispara.

¡Para!

¡Basta!

vivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevive

The Romance Language Sisters

As a teacher of Spanish and Portuguese, and as someone who has acheived near-native proficiency in both, I am often asked just how different the two languages are. Here's an analogy I've developed as an answer.

Imagine I show you a family portrait of four sisters. They appear elegant, radiant, vibrant. There are no twins among them, but they are all similar in age and you can definitely see a family air about them. The extension of each smile, the bridge of each nose, the arch of each eyebrow and the curve of each breast show variations on the same Latin family theme. In fact two of them, you decide, seem to resemble each other very closely indeed.

After I show you the portrait, I introduce them to you in person, and you exchange a few words with each of the four sisters. You learn that their appearance was no indicator of how they speak, because the two that you had previously categorized together by physical resemblance, you have now split apart by speech, each with one of the remaining two sisters. Two of the four, although speaking different languages, seem to speak quite nasally and slide more often between their words, while the other two speak with non-nasal, sharp, clear vowels in their also distinct languages. Among the four of them, they seem to be able to understand each other to some extent, though this varies by context and speaker.

Finally you learn their names and the key to the analogy. The two who look the most similar of face and body are named Spanish and Portuguese. But Spanish, when speaking, shares with her sister Italian the use of sharp, clear vowels, while Portuguese, and her sister French, speak with a greater range of vowels, including nasal ones, as well as slipperier-sounding consonants.

The analogy is not perfect. What about the extended family, with sisters like Catalan, Galician, Haitian Creole, and Romanian? What about dialects and other variations within one language, such as Continental vs. Brazilian Portuguese? Obviously it is a more complex issue than my simple portrayal allows; however, I find that at least for the typical perceptions of most Anglophones, the humble little analogy proves insightful for characterizing (if not explaining) the visual similarities between written Portuguese and Spanish, as well as the spoken affinities between Italian and Spanish, and between French and Portuguese.

cada quem

tem quem fala dormido e de pé, né?
tem quem não percebe o fluxo da maré,
o empurrão do sangue,
o pestanejo da lua,
nem mesmo estando
mergulhado
na faísca de estrelas e ondas.
tem quem não pode perceber
nem conceber
a vitalidade de cada
momento de cada
um de
cada
cá dá
cadê
a consciência do
cada
QUEM?

Bar Altazor

Bar Altazor, Santiago de Chile, agosto del 2000

Encuéntrame en el Bar Altazor

donde nos despojaremos de nuestra gruta de huesos

donde colgaremos el bastón de nuestro esqueleto

en el significado de algún significante errante

Entáblame en el Varal Tasor

donde desconfiaremos de las palabras

donde ejercitaremos nuestras lenguas entumecidas

desviadas para siempre de su rol telúrico y puramente excavador

Entiéndeme en el Bar Alta Sor

en la esquina de Bello Naufragio con Medusa Irreparable

al lado del Molino de Estremecimiento

y frente a la Funda Ziombi Sentewi do Bro

Entrevístame en el baraltazor

con Lázaro y Althotas, mis anagramigos,

con alquimias, astrolabios, y alambiques

de Del Puerto de los equinoccios cuadrados

Enfílamelo lo melo

fi lalo

falo

a o

o

Vicente Huidobro and the Curse of the Aymara

Let us imagine the young Vicente Huidobro, intrepid explorer of the heights of poetry, as he stands among swirling clouds, braced against the whistling wind of an Andean mountaintop, in the epiphanic moment in which he receives the following pearl of wisdom from an elderly Aymara poet-guru:

"El poeta es un dios; no cantes a la lluvia, poeta: haz llover." 

The magic words echo among the peaks as the guru disappears into the mist. The young Huidobro, grateful and enlightened, reluctantly makes his way down the cordillera, feeling very reassured by what he has heard. The mystical aphorism affirms the apprentice seer's yearning for the godlike power of original imagery and semantic immanence.

Such a scenario is what Huidobro would like for us to believe in "La creación pura: Ensayo de estética," his manifesto attempting to arrange and defend his poetics, first published in French in L'Esprit Nouveau in April 1921. Regardless of the origin of the guru's cryptic phrase (Juan Larrea, for example, suggests that Huidobro merely switched one kind of "Indian" for another, in that the phrase is elsewhere attributed to a Hindu poet), and its various modifications in several of Huidobro's texts--such as

"Por qué cantáis la rosa, ¡oh poetas! / Hacedla florecer en el poema" ("Arte poética")

--the essence of its meaning challenges the temporal nature of poetry as an art of words through its mandate (the command "make") to execute something akin to organic immediacy. In fact, as our daring adventurer (cue stirring music) returns with the boon of knowledge from his heroic quest, beginning to sense within himself the intense desire to conceive of a--yes, that's it!--a metalinguistic parachute voyage, he does not suspect (ominous key change) the perils that await him. He does not yet understand that the mystical message, still resounding in his ears, bears the potential to be both blessing and curse. He walks, confidently, into a trap.

The paradox of the Aymara's blessing/curse is the synecdoche trap, my metaphor for describing the necessity to create an image, part by part, in an always and essentially incomplete way, especially as compared to image-creating in the visual arts. Given the temporal limitations of the written word as artistic medium, it is impossible to perceive the entire image or range of actions, at one glance, of, for example, a body--an image at once very ordinary and yet complex. Such a total perception at one glance is at least theoretically possible in the visual or spatial arts, but a writer must name, and describe, a body part by part, action by action.

The truest solution to the synecdoche trap is to employ some kind of radical onomatopeia, impossibly expanded beyond the range of mere sound such that the word IS the image IS the thing itself. One of Huidobro's examples in this vein would be his palindrome neologism "eterfinifrete" from his 1931 masterpiece Altazor. Such words can exist with effect in a certain context, but they're better for inventing than for describing, and the semantic problem with the end of Altazor is that the entire context--no longer just a word here and there--is composed of this kind of invented words.

Huidobro's more frequently deployed solution, more orthodox in a paradoxical vanguard way, is best explained in his earlier manifesto "La poesía": to find the novel juxtaposition of "palabras enemigas" whose semantic charges ignite the sparks of illumination. An example that he trots out is the title image of one of his collections, "horizonte cuadrado." Preferably such images occupy no more than two words: a smaller word count means greater proximity to the simultaneity or totality for which many vanguard writers envied the plastic arts and also music. But it is never as easy in practice as it sounds in theory, and this tension between plan and execution is essentially what articulates the theme of Altazor, in which the reader's gaze falls along the pages into the impasse of separating form from meaning, with any degree of success, in written expression.

[...]

my further explorations of these ideas:

Aesthetics of Equilibrium: The Vanguard Poetics of Vicente Huidobro and Mário de Andrade. 

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures. Purdue University Press, 2006.

"Altazor: A New Arrangement."
Hispanic Issues On Line Volume 6 (Spring 2010):  
Huidobro's Futurity: Twenty-First-Century Approaches (eds. Luis Correa-Díaz and Scott Weintraub)

Corporeality in Early Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature: Body Articulations.

Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming January 2013.

Carne Vale

o que? você é vegetariana, que nem vegana?
mas a carne vale como carne humana
a carne vale na rua que nem no quarto
a carne vale na terça que nem na quarta
de cinzas de pó de fumo
convertidos e convestidos e transvestidos
os desejos com as suas fantasias
penas, pêlos, e antropofagias
quando tesão? quanto tesão!
eis uma incorporação
caníbal, cardápio carnívoro
como, logo sou
carne como você sou
carne ante você sou
carne com soma e carne consumo
carne com fome de mais
e mais carne
carne caramelo, cravo e canela
carne com leite, carne coletânea
carne fresca e nova que nem do Brás
carne velha e podre que nem do bispo
a carne me afoga na fome do fogo
do adão e da eva e da cacetada
carnes de cores e corações
carne sacra de devocões
carnes destacadas e desfiladas
carnes batucadas e esquentadas
caramba!
mas,
que seja carnaval porque a carne vale
e não carnaval porque a carne vai
embora
'ta vendo? valeu! fizemos foi carnaval!