So My Kimera, Black Faviola
so my kimera, black Faviola, the bagpipe pattern
melodious cerpent of only fire, in her open body
went to the stud, it didn’t florish, wasn’t in the lyght, didn't tel
my kimera, Faviola, sea of heathen songs
india and pretty;
and eyes to joint, and hollows to doors
this beside me, peremnial, it’s beside the cages
that prison her immaculate blood, her unstitched beauti
from the darkness of the sholder, beast freedom sacrilege:
I told you, you didn’t came from there, my love
you swore that love bigan in the sea
that the lesbic rain it’s not more languid
that the water inside a cage is the remoteness, that
between darkness and a shadou
to the breaths of your sleeples night you fed
the wails from the senseless tree
“so cybilized these guys,” you said
“from the swamp of the world hard broders,” I cried
“from Asia furious biolent wolves,” you went on
the verbe confirms more against Corinto, I shake for Christ
from the treeson Eva saves herself, Faviola
Eva saves herself, my love
Psicobilly, the Unflight, I
May 3rd, I didn’t go out of Munich,
nor I got to Vienna the morning after with a fractured voice
nor early, or late, or ever
where flowers were, flowers are still, Apolo
cursing, sortilege, round, death, scarecrow
no one stops the dawn’s tenderness from a plane to Bucharest
of the unguarded things, the fireless things
of the flying threads, the infinite soundtrack
the waterless, naked, infertile world
what do you know about the waterless, naked, infertile world?
crying, climbing, flexible horses bellow
my bloody image, never my battle, never
the lipstick, the window, the unknown, blinking
the cheerless fatality, the atheist fatality
in the shape of the victims one finds
dark and brilliant fingerprints, narrow spaces
splendid bridges, stripped arms, rhythm
Europe moves the inner universe of the barren within
and there is my blood, there black flowers, there
me
the doppelgänger of a radioactive world.
Mental Yellowstone or the Suppressed Silence in Every Tongue
my usual patria is the edge of the earth
sleep until midnight
halfway between skin syntax
that fights against the far-off land
and several sewed holes
to the very silence
of a movie theatre on a Sunday afternoon
my usual patria is a TV series
eyes of a luis buñuel film
redone in armpits
of hideous rural ghost
eyes in free fall from Angels Falls
eyes of green mouths
tiny classic numerology
eyes of a burst inside the
poorly cut cup, saint to machete, arrhythmic coin, long reflection,
Ecclesiastes’ verse
over the bed, bottle of blood out into impalpable sea
d’arpentigny cashmere treaty
the living room’s sudden darkness
street poetry, new year’s
glass, control post
nothing to say
with these words nothing
to say
look at the things that wished to be looked at:
a dispersed reality
fades
in concrete eye
[Tourists Waiting to Leave Paradise]
hide the Vía Oro gatherings
hide the birds and exhale autumn’s typhoons
as dead children all is possible:
rivermovies riverstreets
Marlene, parcels, truth, and centuries of flowers
icy covers, little stones, brutal
memory, baobab
rivermovie kids
we write to the poet because whether he wants it or not other wars nest—
nest us/ SO COME NAKED
because other wars nest—SO COME
bye bye godlets, reptilian, disco mannequins
broken tongue
pretty
I’ll always resist death telling me
I woke up and my name is a name everybody in this bar knows
I was born before the silence of the seas/ CELLOPHANE
wind purges
fetus and defying accounts
harmless tongue of the Latino hymen
our early morning
I was born before their godlets
infinite Muhammad scratched the Nirvana and in his guesthouse
my comrades broke the rules
smoking, dressed indecently, yes
smoking, expecting the absence, fuck, what else?
ruined brats, know-it-alls; ticket in hand
brown lungs, Charleston, ticket in hand, the flight announced
four fifteen
ten past five, the clock says
Four Poems
Wingston González
translated from the Spanish by José García Escobar
Listen to "Psicobilly, the Unflight, I" read in the original Spanish by the poet:
The first time I saw Wingston González perform was during a reading at the Mexican embassy in Guatemala City, in 2012. I say “perform” because Wingston’s delivery was nothing short of a theatrical happening. He lengthens the words, he breaks the words, he sings, raps, and prays them. It is as if the unusual architecture of his poetry, its themes, and musicality, can only be expressed through diversity, and with the combination of the ritualistic cadence of a shaman and the swagger of a rapper.
Undoubtedly part of that uniqueness comes from the relationship between the poet and his birthplace: Livingston—a town known for its unusual mix of Maya, Ladino, Garífuna, and Afro-Caribbean people. The first poem of this selection, “So My Kimera, Black Faviola,” is one of the finest examples of the Caribbean energy and idiosyncrasies of Wingston’s poetry.
The unconventional spelling—as he put it—and punctuation found in “Kimera” is, according to Wingston, meant to depict the tone, rhythm, and unusual delivery of the people he met in Livingston. They were loud, extroverted, fast-paced, and at times uneducated—yet linguistically inventive—characters that captured his imagination. For the translation, I first tried to creatively misspell the words he had modified in Spanish. My first intention was to mimic the sounds in Spanish. If melodic similarity was completely unavailable, I went for structure. Additionally, to accurately capture the musicality of the poem, Wingston and I, separated by five thousand kilometers, exchanged WhatsApp voice notes.
“First line of the second paragraph,” I’d say. “Is there a pause before the second line?”
“Ah, yes,” he’d say. And he would send me a recording of said line, taking me back to that reading at the Mexican embassy.
The remaining poems, although untouched by Wingston’s linguistic experimentation, retain much of his intonation. In “Mental Yellowstone or the Suppressed Silence in Every Tongue” and “[Tourists Waiting to Leave Paradise]” Wingston placed special emphasis on the frantic and furious essence of the poem and on the narrator’s hindered voice—a result of the dramatic context.
Wingston’s poems and his delivery, I thought during the translation process, are a mix between Rakim, Robert Johnson, Easy E., Langston Hughes, Coltrane’s sax, Miles’s trumpet, and Derek Walcott. His wordplay is utterly unique, artistic and journalistic, personal and ethereal, quotidian and epic. At times his work drifts subtly like an imploration, at times it breaks and stumbles as if affected by some imperceptible tremor, and sometimes it drops punishingly, heavily, rhythmically, and repeatedly.
Undoubtedly part of that uniqueness comes from the relationship between the poet and his birthplace: Livingston—a town known for its unusual mix of Maya, Ladino, Garífuna, and Afro-Caribbean people. The first poem of this selection, “So My Kimera, Black Faviola,” is one of the finest examples of the Caribbean energy and idiosyncrasies of Wingston’s poetry.
The unconventional spelling—as he put it—and punctuation found in “Kimera” is, according to Wingston, meant to depict the tone, rhythm, and unusual delivery of the people he met in Livingston. They were loud, extroverted, fast-paced, and at times uneducated—yet linguistically inventive—characters that captured his imagination. For the translation, I first tried to creatively misspell the words he had modified in Spanish. My first intention was to mimic the sounds in Spanish. If melodic similarity was completely unavailable, I went for structure. Additionally, to accurately capture the musicality of the poem, Wingston and I, separated by five thousand kilometers, exchanged WhatsApp voice notes.
“First line of the second paragraph,” I’d say. “Is there a pause before the second line?”
“Ah, yes,” he’d say. And he would send me a recording of said line, taking me back to that reading at the Mexican embassy.
The remaining poems, although untouched by Wingston’s linguistic experimentation, retain much of his intonation. In “Mental Yellowstone or the Suppressed Silence in Every Tongue” and “[Tourists Waiting to Leave Paradise]” Wingston placed special emphasis on the frantic and furious essence of the poem and on the narrator’s hindered voice—a result of the dramatic context.
Wingston’s poems and his delivery, I thought during the translation process, are a mix between Rakim, Robert Johnson, Easy E., Langston Hughes, Coltrane’s sax, Miles’s trumpet, and Derek Walcott. His wordplay is utterly unique, artistic and journalistic, personal and ethereal, quotidian and epic. At times his work drifts subtly like an imploration, at times it breaks and stumbles as if affected by some imperceptible tremor, and sometimes it drops punishingly, heavily, rhythmically, and repeatedly.
Wingston González (b. 1986) is a Garífuna poet from Guatemala. His poetry collection Translaciones won the prestigious Luis Cardoza y Aragón Mesoamerican Poetry Prize in 2015. His other books include Los magos del crepúsculo (y blues otra vez) (2005), CafeínaMC: segunda parte, la fiesta y sus habitantes (2010), CafeínaMC: primera parte, la anunciación de la fiesta (2011), san juan—la esperanza (2013, 2015), Miss muñecas vudu (2013), Espuma sobre las piedras (a documentation of Alejandra Garavito’s choreography and the author’s poems, 2014), ¡Hola Gravedad! (translation into the German by Timo Berger, 2016), and Nuevo manual para una educación sentimental (with artwork by Bernabé Arévalo, 2017). He has collaborated on performatic poems with Naufus Ramírez Figueroa: lugar de consuelo, which was commissioned for the Coração do espantalho play (2016), part of the 32nd São Paulo Art Biennial; A Universal History of Infamy, for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and la playa espera por vos for the Linnæus in Tenebris expo for the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2017). He is an editor and translator for Waníchugu, a Garífuna-based publishing house. He is a member of La Retaguardia, an independent art collective based on Guatemala City.
José García Escobar is a journalist, fiction writer, translator, and former Fulbright scholar from Guatemala. He received his M.F.A. in creative writing from The New School in New York City. His writing has appeared in The Evergreen Review, Guernica, and Words Without Borders. He is Asymptote’s editor-at-large for the Central American region and currently works as a journalist in Plaza Pública.
