#elisa chavez
sin hogar / in this house
elisa chavez
Todo el mundo
merece una casa
pero no quieres
pagarla.
¡Qué caro es
el camino alto!
Tu insistes: ningún
cambio sin reembolso.
Pues sí, ¡tiremos la
persona!
¿sabes qué elles
cuestan demasiado,
con sus recursos
y uñas sucias?
vale, creo que lo
sucio
es tus locuras:
son tu sagrado,
tu biblia;
envías los versos
a la alcaldesa
apuñaladas
con miles agujas.
Creo que es más fácil
culpar le desdichade
que abrir la billetera
las setenta veces siete
de Jesús.
Creo que
inventas monstruos
y les das las caras
de vecines.
In this house
we believe:
we’ve paid
enough.
What about
mismanagement?
Lying is illegal,
and so is
sitting down.
Trees are
people too.
Loaves and fishes are
nonrenewable
resources.
That’s just science,
unless it’s social
science.
Alert for young
single women: Men
with the faces of
dogs
have been spotted
in the park,
Men stuck with needles go door to door selling magazines. They let themselves in, flay my flatscreen in half, machete me and drink blood from my porcelain lungs, police say there’s nothing they can do.
A hole in the road has gained sentience and gravels my mouth while I sleep. My neighbors applaud, wokefully ringing my bed. Wake up! The city is dying!
The apartment blocks are maggot-ridden, wobbling with braids of concrete, their windows are packed full of bodies with limbs fused to bone looking for handouts desecrating and their teeth noise complaint and their self-respect rotting in piles and the teeth say
it’s time to make neighbors of you all.
Post link
La llorona / campo de concentración
Elisa Chavez
Nacida María,
se llaman “La Llorona"
porque sus gritos
hacen sangrar las orejas
de poderosos hombres.
Cortan el aire,
llamando la ruina
como tormenta.
Se niegan a decirle
dónde están sus hijes.
Su único crimen es cruzar.
Ella llora porque
sus hijes están en jaulas.
Están cubiertes de heces, moco,
leche materna. Los carceleros
no les dejan dormir,
y sin dormir no pueden soñar.
La llorona ronda
la orilla del río,
rasgando el vestido blanco.
Los carceleros se molestan
por su falta de civismo:
están ahogando a niñes
y preferían hacerlo en paz.
El alarido de la llorona
clama justicia:
"¿Dónde están mis hijes?”
La Llorona
was a selfish woman.
Beautiful but shallow.
(Aren’t they all?)
Her children interfered
with her ambition,
so she dragged them
to the riverbed.
When the monster mama
crossed into heaven,
she concealed her crimes,
and would not tell the angels
where her children were.
They said to her, “You cannot enter
unless you do it the right way,"
and turned her
from heaven’s border.
Don’t let La Llorona catch you
by the river,
where she still searches
for the anchor of her babies.
She haunts the banks
in her bone-white dress
and bloody reaching nails,
howling down the sun
with her cries:
"WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?”
Good morning everybody! This is an old-new poem, first published last year in Miss Translated: A Benefit for the New Sanctuary Coalition. Today I present it to you featuring hopefully-more-legible-typeface! colors??? and, as ever, a grammar mistake I noticed at the very last minute. Don’t forget to abolish ICE! Besos a todes.
Post link
