Each Wednesday, Editor's Choice brings you a poem from a new book selected as a must-read. Our feature editor this week is Vivek Narayanan.
Amanda Berenguer
Translated from the Spanish by Urayoán Noel
Why this sand in amber and repose? This stone what?
a soft grind? Desert body invading the sheet where I write
the page where I'm signing the eagle, the book where
I feather myself with pleasure. From where this pale
cracked skin? How this sterile pollen? Desert hands
covering the notebook where I initiate the tide, the
table where I suffer humiliations and make worlds, the
slab on which I carve figures of habeas corpus. How long
this impure flour? Why this terrible patience? Desert
gravity subjugating the segment where I trim sails and
discordant clouds, the memory where I shiver madly,
waist-deep inside the cold canal, the dark codex in
which to acknowledge blindness.

 

Trazo (Derivado 1)

Handwritten, with color, Spanish original of Amanda Berenguer's "Outline (Derivative 1)
from the book MATERIA PRIMA /Ugly Ducking Presse
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