Cecilia Pavón

Facing North

An entire life buried in the heat of

coming back and finding a being that lives,

breathes, waits for me, is my other half.

When the birds were eating from my hand and

I could feel that they were of flesh,

with blood beating through their bewitched

bodies.

And I didn’t care about the cold weather because

the mornings were hot, and it felt like we were

living in the nineteenth century, in the emptiness, in the humidity.

Because of the kisses everyone else gave

each other, and the rapes, which were

games. Not real, not martyrs.

We lived in a horrid building, but I

didn’t see its ugliness, because it was

surrounded by greenery, and it was lived in.

The tropics were a dream, an amulet.

Any body a blessing, the

emotions rays that like lizard

tongues brought together the surfaces of stigmata.

I thanked the heavens for a window, I drank

that which purifies like a gift: The pole,

falling, and dismantled. The wind

erasing the shapes.

I washed myself with bleach. I never got around

to washing the sheets, I wanted them to be white

too so I could dream that life was a

dream. I robbed an elderly woman, to put dinner

on the table. That night, in my head I

composed odes to beauty and I wanted

to throw myself into the lake of fever. At the

party there was a party and you could hear screams,

a party of whales, with wreathes

on the door. And the two of us, beyond

mute, were opening holes in another wall.

But love arrived and we rented a car

to travel to the Magic Kingdom.

I named the desert and the palm trees

Mickey Mouse. But the warning for

deadly hurricanes went off, and I left

to take cover somewhere where there weren’t

any sirens. To the hotel, to seclusion, to

transmutation in voyage.

Writing the prayer for chaos down

on a piece of paper: If I die, let them bury me

alive, and they shall give him the portion

of my heart, but they shouldn’t revive me.

It’s just a lie, all that we see.

And details.

Sometimes I freeze,

or imagine everything that happens inside

my body as caverns.

Or the encounters are enchantments

and the apparitions virgins or

detachment of the flesh

of others.

I never got to see an animal, so I don’t know.

It’s asphyxiation, it’s the flicker

of hope that faith will come.

About the AuthorCecilia Pavón was born in Mendoza, Argentina, in 1973. She has lived in Buenos Aires since 1992. She holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of Buenos Aires. In 2012, she published her collected poetry in Un hotel con mi nombre (A Hotel With My Name). Her other publications include 27 poemas con nombres de persona (2010), the ebook Once Sur (2012), and the short-story collection Los sueños no tienen copyright (2010). She has two forthcoming translations into English to be published in 2015: Belleza y Felicidad (Sand Paper Press) and A Hotel With my Name (Scrambler Books).

About the TranslatorJacob Steinberg was born in Stony Brook, New York, in 1989. He has published the full-length poetry collections Magulladón (2012), Ante ti se arrodilla mi silencio (2013), and Before You Kneels My Silence (2014). As a translator he has worked with Cecilia Pavón, CAConrad, and Mario Bellatin, among others. He currently resides in New York.