Anna Mendelssohn

Anna Mendelssohn, also known as Grace Lake, who has died aged 61 of a brain tumour, was principally a poet, and a poet like no other, but was also a painter, musician, actor and, earlier in her life, a political activist. She came from what she described as “a very strict working-class socialistic Jewish background” in Stockport, Cheshire. But what impelled her throughout her life was a 1960s spirit of radical revolt. At first it was political but, after a great turning point in her life, it was artistic.

She was educated at Stockport high school and studied literature at Essex University (1967-69), at both a brilliant and unruly pupil. In the early 1970s she had opportunities to go into film, but her fighting spirit drove her to become involved with the Angry Brigade. The exact nature of her involvement is unclear – her own account contradicts that of others. But she was one of the “Stoke Newington Eight” who were in 1972 brought to trial accused of conspiracy to cause explosions, and she received a 10-year prison sentence, of which she served five. She always maintained that this was a gross miscarriage of justice. Her impassioned and eloquent self-defence at the Old Bailey is still remembered with pride by her then comrades.

In about 1985 she settled in Cambridge, by which time she had three children. She studied at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, but most of her work was done independently. She now devoted herself increasingly to poetry and art as the central and exclusive sphere of her existence. All her judgments were founded on art and poetry, from her fierce contempt for technology and all forms of rationalism, down to the small practicalities of daily life, which she virtually ignored. At odds with society, and unable to establish a bohemian artistic circle around herself, she developed an increasingly hermetic way of life.

Her poetry ranged widely in manner but was fundamentally ecstatic and expostulatory, often in an angry tone concerning the harms that had been done to her, but also outrageously ludic in the surrealist line. She accumulated several thousand handwritten poems and probably a greater number of ink drawings. She showed little interest in publication, but one book appeared through the efforts of others – Implacable Art (2000) – as well as five locally produced pamphlets.

Anna’s legacy, apart from a room heaped to the ceiling with books, poetry manuscripts and drawings, lies in her unique artistic temperament, beholden to no cultural dictates, fiercely reclaiming her rights as a woman and a Jew, but partaking equally in art as a theatre of linguistic and visual delight.
Peter Riley 

 

Refusal is a key element of the poem’s communication: there are many to whom that communication is refused. At one point she [A.M.] mentions those who are “never to be allowed anywhere near this poem“, elsewhere she states unambiguously that “my poetry is not for them“, “I don’t talk to the police except never“. And more playfully: “I’m not suggesting any of you are landlords—only— /we are very different & I read Gogol from that position“. That position is outside,  of both the judge’s sentences and the perimeters of the society he defines.

As far as Mendelssohn’s enemies are concerned, and these are many—not only judges but, variously, pompous poets, social workers, narrow-minded politicos and patriachal imbeciles of all sorts—it is a communication that only speaks to them in order to deny their ability to read, and to refuse them a place within the poem. It is an outsideness that also has nothing to do with the easy conformity of the poet as some kind of rebel. Mendelssohn is no rebel; the content of her refusal to communicate with her enemies is one that demands the possibility of communication, and of the reality of a community that can exist despite the accusations of its incomprehensibility and illegitimacy. In the face of those who have “silenced“ her, the response is to speak a language to which they have no access.

“Minds do exist to agitate and provoke, to make“—this, in “pladd (you who say either)“, is as much of a statement of poetics as anyone could need. Poetry can’t be merely oppositional—and thus the agitation and provocative stance of Mendelssohn’s poetry must be such that its intensity can make a ground, can take position. The poems will keep the judges, etc. out, but those same words must have people to whom they can speak. The anguish of any oppositional writing is the doubt, not so much that anyone is listening, but that there is anybody to hear. But the question then becomes how do these poems speak. If a poem has to have content, it is not the same content as, say, an agitational leaflet, or a piece of journalism. The poem’s agitation comes from elsewhere.
[…]
The poem’s content, as an interrupting voice, comes from just that convulsion, where the poem turns inside out, where the statement emerges directly from the rubble of poetic form, or indeed from institutionalised avant-garde politesse. The untruths that the language carries are pounded into garbage, are twisted out of shape, until the perpetrators of those untruths can no longer enter the language, and so that not new forms, but new statements can emerge. Or, as Mendelssohn puts it beautifully:“a poem of objects that live by magic“.
Sean Bonney

 

Never speak to another poet. Never breathe a word about your plans. Don’t be kind. Don’t care. They’ll only think you want something. If you have style, they’ll think you have money. They’ll stop you in the street and tell you to get the hell out if you don’t have a decent place to live in. They say they are permanently poor but they won’t understand why you are not on the phone, why your name isn’t in the book. You won’t tell other poets because they will be manipulating against you in another way. They will reinforce any old current theory. People with radical pasts are not invited to dinner. People will warn their children against you, and your children, they will also warn your children against you. You do not ask to be born therefore you do not have the right to live. Never voice radical opinions, you may be mistaken for an activist. A poet cannot be an activist. This is England remember. You can be gucci-voiced and you may get away with it, don’t jolt, don’t drive, don’t paint, don’t read, don’t bear children, don’t smile, you act.
Anna Mendelssohn, from What a Performance

 

 

A man who snatches a ring will always have snatched
the world of poetry & my solitaire silver
directions are not given in poetry one day caught
By crowded brains, apart from any who, concerning themselves
With satisfaction hold throbbing unconscious surfaces
To shore up their ever appealing inadequacies,
My attentive concern for stolen time
I cannot sever my body from its multiplicity of
Longing for words that lasting longer are being rendered null
No, I should not be here alone with political obsessives playing for broke.
Is the economy mysterious or isn’t it a matter of a lost card game?
Half of the family gain the other half lose. Half go to Oxford the other half
are shunned. Half own racehorses the other half play boogie woogie on
a clapped out old piano. Half take up the room the other half are filed out
by pathologists. Someone comes across the idea of loss. Wastes a few
minutes before latching onto both. Will one of them tell me why everyone is
talking about money? Tell me why you won’t let my father into your
camera museum? He knows more about silent films and the 1920’s than
you do. Yes, well it was always like that. Buying and selling property increases
property prices. I’m not suggesting that any of you are landlords—only—
we are very different & I read Gogol from that position. How many operators,
was it all one rush for the unbeatable biography resistant to auto, closed door,
abbreviation fever, throwing away no book, beating down bar lines, a clock set,
clock within a clock, a nest of clocks & set in the heat of the intricate
mechanism
a heart. a clock in the shape of a heart. the exquisite birthday present: a
poem of objects that live by magic.

 

∗∗∗

 

pladd. (you who say either)

nothing can be clear when knowing the associations
are read by unread people, exposées, exposures.
new poems for old. groovy. associations
and world societies of interactive growth.
groan. a place full of untrained actors
absorbing dimensions of cradling pain
securing test periods of temperature change.
sewing elbes to harare, scratch luck.
nothing matches the theoretical tuck.
nutmeg. primus stove. raised eyebrows.
work sharing. retreat into the forest.
the silver conifers. the crumbs. chums.
biceps & musical hairs, plaesthetics.
planna vanne. plin plor plon pladverbially
plodding along with a net in sturdy
boots, add a few bulletins, patrol.
centuries. narrowly missing. pointed
drop. matches stove. matches museum.
curves around a few hundred unsent
letters, all impassioned, no, perfectly
spelt, satirical tirades, benjamin constant.
adolph who? painting his face whiter—
interview. tripping around in a chanterelle.
pulled. puppet. placed directly opposite.

the rhine in spine laced down the left, peace seized,
memory left. no one taught them the meaning
they think that they are naturally right.
i wait, i walk with life too great to beat,
out into the cold, out into the street, out
without a compact lap top, out without confirmation
of the memory of a less risky controversy,
that off offending the innate and incontestable
supremacy of those who forget that nothing
is lost by not hanging the innocent and clean.
that nurses are not happy to be garotted unseen,
that ignorance in the acclaimed borders on obscenity,
that those who love their own bottoms turn them
into their faces, rather than remember any human
sight, rather than make any effort to use their
power to help, racism is there, as ever, with
all its benefits and advantages for free booty
& plunder. It is nothing worthwhile. A few bumps
here and there. A few flash waves, a wild radar.
Minds do exist to agitate & provoke, to make—
who is clean cleaner and cleanest. All allies.
White thieves, white agents, appointments &
shields, pland plainte. all fun. all whoopee.
all practised straight faces. all useful for
fuel and surplus importants. Saints each one
self professing and deployed. Basking in
joy, blessed and unwounded and automatically

adjusted. Osip Mandelstam in England would have been
murdered too. Where there is no art. but the
american whine of a self pitying tart’s
immaculate shine. My son is waxen.
His mother has had her ears pressed in tight
her ears are turned inward she has ingrowing
ears. Plears. Péret (Oh not Péret. Oh not Cixous.
Oh not Derrida. Oh not Virginia Woolf.
Oh not Gertrude Stein. Oh not George Sand.)
‘Oh not Oh no I’ll go deaf dumb and blind.’
Serviette scrumpled. Napkin crumpled. Grey
Pabst Grille Dreyer Gris rubble bouclé fuzzy
smothering Juan, the grandmother tells herself
stories, sound split from sight, which time
am I living in? I can tell by reading.
I play too wide Yes? but I throw my own Oceans
Out into the Islands of Thieves where they stand
with their miserable greyed underpants
swimming around their plump sweaty knees
It would certainly help were my accent broader,
a Self that one is pullulating in on this
Subject of editorially infiltrated Capitals,
my years of care are not matched by much
other than steel and martyr’d hatred.
Ploy. The heavenly god and the heavenly voice.
A few, only a few. Am I far away from those
I love? Is this someone else’s?

 

∗∗∗

 

friday

Has anyone spoken to me today? A product of fears and phobias.
Who transcends immortality by killing herself before remembering
how much she loved the earth this life. To distance myself
From hatred I have nothing to say to inquisitorial people.
and so they call me mad and I watch them fume and stomp.
It might be football spectacular fever combined with detestation
of singularity in the female writer whose possession is a Muse
Invisible apart from approximate complement thrashing the waves

this place declares itself unbeatable, it rises higher and higher
in an oven of city proportions’ perfect bake, baking uniform cakes
to standard book size, coated in pink, peach, chocolate, toffee
And occasionally peppermint green, really the law should not encroach
Upon poetry. It is a different voice that rakes embers for clues.
Poetry can be stripped. Racketeers compromise advantageously
Unracked by the objects of their disquieted attention
Work is too much trouble to those who don’t love their subject

And literature is lost. lost to the word work, lost to the temptation
of gradgrind rectification and its concomitant collapse
The slow haul of never, dough won’t stretch quite far enough
In the shape of dough grey slipping into a dappled coat
the throat is ironed and cut down to size from the mountains
from the hills that dare to stretch a desire to walk in fresh air
Out of true for nothing in common where knowledge is blacked

Nothing in common when pockets are not being pulled out and left to hang
For the amusement of nazi girls with their viennese exclusion orders,
Massive attack in violation preceded by slowly progressive armadillos
Nose, superfluous aesthetic ha engineered passion in passing
Time constructs expansion beyond its means into endless advantage
that is blind yet assured before action divides into inviolable theatre

Who looks for the snake in this part of the world, as a matter of bilious
interest.

 

∗∗∗

 

that there is law breaking. which filming
is not. that is not a question. filming
is not lawbreaking. there are peripheries.
time is one periphery. then it ends.
watching is not filming unless one
makes a conscious decision to
write a film. then there is no excuse
for approaching me on any matter
other than writing, on no other grounds.
no swiping my passport, having
swiped my childrens’. no knocking at
the door to demand flesh. no drunk
stinking mystical preaching, no
no missionaries for the secret perfection.
now ant-semitic practises have been learnt
i shall reply: there are no compulsory conversions
in this country.

 

∗∗∗

 

This is the reason why I do not conform.
A smile is a formality. That is all that exists
between people who do not know each other.
It is irrelevant what one knows of anyone.

The torso. People without minds. Tenses can be
Rapidly switched. How does one know that
one’s pursuer does not intend to cause one
harm. A man can demand explanations.

A woman is accused of aggressive behaviour
for querying motive. One does not need to
Pursue anyone, one can be invited to live
in a house & find oneself being used

for servitude. And Interrogated, relentlessly
& remorselessly, until one is too weak
to move. This is peace as is death.
It is imagined that one is writing.
Why is it difficult to register Detestation.

The dangers in writing are inherent.
Why it is dangerous to criticize the Establishment
Openly. Why what amuses the Establishment
is the Bad Use of language and Sex.
Why women are discussed in terms of knickers.
Why it is important not to lose control
Of one’s own mind. Why Literature
Frames novices. Why Framing is a sociopolitical act.

 

∗∗∗

 

basalt.  basalt.  two   sculptured   heads.  hongrie  1956.  tanks.  fire.  hatred.
disturbing the peace. It’s a filthy  world. Archaeological perception  reveals
gunpowder  deposits  & so-called  insanity.  A  woman  artist  does not Need
the  insidious  interference  of  any  woman  who  tells  me what I know. Un
paléturier.  The  painting  caused  dismay.  I  question that dismay  although
not  in a  protracted  fashion, not giving birth to a mangrove, the confronta-
tion  between  the  artist  &  the  authorities  of white needlework results  in
the  artist  being  locked  up   without paint,  water  & paper. It was only  the
the  site  of  a  riot which  I  did  not  witness  but  which was famous  for the
brutal  &  corrupt  police   in  that  area  of  West  London  which  was  being
gentrified.  As  Gentrification  is  creeping  around  with  adopted  republics.
Landowners  paint  as  though  they  had  known  the  years of freedom, but
they  don’t  have  to know anything about freedom, they live everywhere  as
though  everywhere  was  theirs to ride their horses through streets & imag-
ine  the  population  cheering  it  makes  me  feel sick. Apollinaire must have
heard   the  old  people  talking,  despairing;  he  might  have   known  Lenin,
What  is to be done?  heard Vladimir and somewhere Krupskaya was calling
him   Vladimir.  the  baby’s   nappy  needs  changing ,  for  this—were  meine
kinder  deposited  in  the  neo-liberal  police  force  élite  comprised  of celtic
economists  with  the  emphasis  on the last syllable. There is no point point-
ing  a  finger  at  the  Chassidim.  The  Celts  don’t  love Judaism & they stamp
down  hard  on  a  little  child’s  love for his mother. But listen, this will drive
you  crazy.  I  don’t  talk  to the  police  except never, the solicitor  calls in the
police  because  I do  not  want  my  house  raided  when I am alone with my
little  children.  but  this  goes  down to  the  point,  and  is  enmeshed  in  the
Nietzschean   Will  of  the  Baudelairean’s   determination   to  declassify  the
Jewess  from  the  functioning  economy  in  Academia  and  in  the  Arts,  for
every  secretary  &  receptionist  looks  Aghast  at  the  Colour.  This  colour is
avoiding   my   decision  making   properties.  Perhaps  both  decorate  pastels
are  neither,  although  it  is  lost.  One  was,  and  demented  is  losing one for
the  other.  Baudelaire  makes  flesh  of  it.  He  uses  Hermes  Trismegistus  to
decorate   interiority.  Do  you  know how frightening it is to have one’s cover
spat  back  at  one  over  a table fit for a king whose wives’ heads are propped
up  in  rosebowls—whose  wives’  heads are mistaken  for cats and  who stare
back  from  their  swathes  of hair when you bend down to  stroke the objects
that  are  nestling  at  your  feet?  I  am  alone  here,  the  art school refused to
acknowledge   that  painting  could  be  flawed.  This  was  another  perverted
tactic  to  exonerate  filthy   racism,   to   conform.  It   isn’t  shocking,  or  even
remarkable.    It   is.  Germanically    inspired.   What    happened   to    me   in
Germany?  I  was  advanced  on  by  a  nurse  with  hypodermic   needle.   She
was   directing  it  to  my  skull.  I  ducked.  It  is  stupid  to  write  for  so many
people    whose   positions  of   authority   now    desensitizes    their    use    of
language.    It    is   true   the    reactions    of    the    radical   authorities    have
confirmed   their  unwillingness  to  act  promptly  to   stem  racist  abuse. The
Jew  is  the  least  protected. People simply start to speak in  that  mock-Jewish
way.  “If  you  can  take  being  in  quod,  you  can  survive  anything.“  Thanks.

 

∗∗∗

 

∼

I have been made of no. n° certainly. no no
No one non person, anon, nothing, nada, & never,
Not now, numb, nit, nib in the air, a cold,
Dead from the start, absent, girl, nothing, not a boy,
The joy & the glory. a girl, fussing about
Cleanliness and pianos and poetry.
No. Miss no. a nanny goat, a ninny, winning for
Others but not for herself. an ass’s head, an nn.

∼

 

∗∗∗

 

off the cuff / some answers // my bracelets. psychology applied to nature in isolation.
ideology destroys my private wishes. emblematic. cobbled hills, streets …
thrown back into personal detestation of someone else’s desire for bijouterie.
daughters of Spain locked in / locked up / locked away from music.
Face. Any face. “Look straight at me“ No. Guilty before proven innocent.
Perverse pleasure in assessing misery. A chance to weaken me.
Points straight in the direction of the firing line. Refuses the mind’s existence.
“This was never France.“ “This is not Spain.“ “This is not Russia.“ “This is not
Portugal“ “This is not the Paris Commune.“ “This is not Lithuania“
“This is not a mountain.“ “This is not a frying pan.“ “This is not a kitchen.“
“This is not a tooth; it is a beach.“ “This is a fog.“ “This is Theobald.“

My little radish, am I neglectful enough? You mean nothing to me now.
A wild blackberry & nettle “tisane“ sewn in to a lace handkerchief, c’est tout.
One teabag a piece. of cake, nothing. o kirsch torte something perhaps.
it’s the fingertips that feel it first. Cruel, heartless ability. I am
considering challenging Angelika to a duel. To give her a taste of Spain.
But I play differently. And I’m afraid it would have to be Swords.
On horseback. or Scimitars in the field. I feel sorry for this country with
You in it. But you are not a marxist, although you assure us that
later you came to marx, after not being a marxist, you came late to
the field. The grass was already growing wild. And the buttercups scarcely.

 

∗∗∗

 

we know it is wrong to talk
about imprisonment. the predominant theory is
still that people have more right to complain
for example about the imprisonment of the
woman in marriage, or the imprisonment by
harsh social conditions even when the
person has done nothing wrong. Because
there is such little chance to explain how
an individual can undergo severe punishment
which can extend beyond the more acceptable
forms of social punishment into the realms
of more socially unacceptable forms of social
punishment, I think that I might be justified
in writing down some of my perceptions.
They are disorganised and scattered. Some
are uninteresting to write, they are not
what I consider to be, in any way, imaginative.
They tell a story whose end is inevitably
tied to its beginning. There is a horrendous
resentment and caution in responses to
an imaginative treatment of Time. Having been
brought up by Orthodox Jews and Freemasons,
I have never understood why esoteric knowledge
should be man’s domain: I was forbidden to
learn the tonal inflections which are marked
in the Torah, yet I received first prize
in the last year I was allowed to learn Hebrew
from the Chief Rabbi, as the most promising
Hebrew scholar. People mess you about. There
are plenty of stupid rules. If people who
criticize me don’t have the guts to criticize
some of the rules extant they can’t expect
my appraisal. If they insist on using one
official interpretation of my past against me,
all I can think is that they are sadists who
delight in the thought of my death. Women
who hang out together like so many giggly
school girls, did they never have a chance to
be in a gang? Why aren’t one or two serious
friends enough for them? Do they really think
they are making good use of their time by
analysing for the umpteenth time stupid
women’s magazines? Images and images: fit
for collage which shows the contradictions
and the CRUELTY of judging on the grounds
of Appearance. The shirt swallowed the rose.

Anna Mendelssohn | Implacable Art
Published by Folio and Equipage

Anna Mendelssohn | What a Performance
Sarah Crangle (University of Sussex)

---

 

 

Miyó Vestrini

“Critics have called Miyó Vestrini the poet of “militant death.” Vestrini is known, too, as the Sylvia Plath of Venezuela, but if she is a Plath, we think she is one who would have set Ted Hughes on fire.  And if Vestrini is a confessional poet, what she is confessing is not a set of personal problems: it is a fatal disappointment with the world at large. Her work is less a self-exposure than a set of  incantations.  These poems are spells for a death that might live eternally, for what Vestrini offers readers is a fundamental paradox: how to create, through writing, an enduring extinction.  Her poems are not soft or brooding laments.  They are bricks hurled at empires, ex-lovers, and any saccharine-laced lie that parades itself as the only available truth.

Miyó Vestrini was born in France, 1938, emigrated to Venezuela at the age of 9, and at eighteen she joined Apocalipsis (Apocalypse), the only woman to do so in the then male-dominated scene of the Venezuelan avant-garde. She soon became a dedicated and prize-winning journalist, directing the arts section of the newspaperEl Nacional. She published three books of poetry in her lifetime: 1971’s Las historias de Giovanna (The History of Giovanna), 1975’s El invierno próximo (The Next Winter), and Pocas virtudes (Little Virtues), published in 1986.  Vestrini died by suicide on November 29, 1991, leaving behind two collections:  a book of poems, Valiente Ciudadano (Brave Citizen) and a book of stories, Órdenes al corazón (Orders to the Heart).” [Kenning Editions]

 “[The collectives of the 50s and 60s] were experiences full of vitality, that were never able to crystallize. We are a burnt-out, lost generation. A generation of frustrated people” (1976)

 

XII (from NEXT WINTER) 
for Luis Camilo

I get up
I do not get up
They hate me
I tie my tubes
I hit a motorcyclist with malice aforethought
I surrender to the Oedipus complex
I wander
I carefully study the differences between dysrhythmia –
psychosis – schizophrenia – neurosis – depression – syndrome – panic
and I’m pissed
left alone in the house when everyone is asleep
I buy a magazine that costs six dollars
they steal my best friend’s purse
they grab me
I push him
I murder him
I remember the umbrella of Amsterdam
and the rain
and the angry gesture
I dedicate myself to drinking to prevent heart attacks
I chew the food fifty times
and I’m bored
and I’m bored
losing weight
gaining weight
losing weight
I give in
I’m don’t give in
I sit still and cry
someone takes me in his arms
and tells me “Be calm I’m still here“
I stop crying
I hear the wind that blows near the sea, only near the sea
I accept that flying cockroaches exist
I find that all my friends treated by psychoanalysts have become
totally sad totally idiotic
they read my I Ching and predict I’ll have a long life
life of shit, I say
I join the bandwagon
I throw myself under the bandwagon
I understand for a single trip how much gas is in the tank
they tell me to turn off the light
I turn it off
they ask me, “You done yet?“
I play stupid
I plead for peace
they fuck me up
I fall asleep up against the bar
I hear the Spaniard’s voice whenever he shits on god
someone cries beside me again
they hit me
they hit me hard
there’s a full moon
I race down the mountain road
I do the math
it doesn’t add up
my chest hurts,
the day is done,
the Red wins
rien ne va plus

 

 

ARANJUEZ

Don’t be ridiculous.
No one dies from holding their breath.
Think of your brittle bones,
of your sweaty folds,
of your dry vagina
and your receding hairline.
Or of your heart attack when you fake orgasm.
Women die of that.
Why you gotta be so obscene?
Because for twenty years I’ve not gone to Aranjuez
and that makes me pissed.

 

 

THE SORROW

I folded his shirts with care
and emptied the nightstand drawer.
Given my sorrow’s size,
I read Marguerite Duras,
hostile and saccharine Marguerite Duras,
who is knitting a shawl for her love.
On the fifth day
I opened the curtains.
Light fell on the greasy-stained bedspreads,
the apartment full of trash,
the door frame peeling.
So much pain
from such ugly things.
I looked once more at his rat face
and threw all the trash in the garbage chute.
The neighbor
alarmed by how much I’d thrown away,
asked if I was doing all right.
It hurts, I told her.
In my mailbox, an anonymous note:
“One who has love
takes care
takes care
and does not clog the drain of the community.“

 

 

BEATRIZ

With or without a dick,
there are things that cannot be done
when you start to sweat
or when the prostate hurts.
So Beatriz killed herself
at the age of fifty-three.
She did not want to participate in the grotesque ceremony
of eulogizing decadence.
She covered all the mirrors
and put satin sheets on the bed.
She was supposed to die there
neat and fragrant
ignoring the rat who bit her breath away
But she preferred the sofa
where she had made love the night before
with a professional party boy
rented for the occasion.
She left a list
of mistakes and successes.
Writing is not important, she wrote,
and signed her name in small print,
believing it apocryphal.

 

 

ONE DAY OF THE WEEK I

When you were born,
in 1938,
César Vallejo was dying.
When your little head,
your navel,
your virgin cunt,
entered the world
from between the beautiful legs of your mother,
they were lowering the poet into a hole.
They covered it with dirt
and you
you were covered the memory.
You could not choose.
Because if you choose
you life.
And if you life
you enjoy.
But joy is the horrific part of the dream:
sleep will be forever.
There will be a smell of fried peppers,
thundering voices in the bar.
It will be a day of the week,
when furniture changes places in the night
and in the mornings,
the women will talk to themselves.
Your nose will be congested and the right eyebrow
will fall more than the left.
The flattened hips,
the bad hair cut and body lost
in any slip that hides the fat in your waist.
If you had sad lunatics for grandparents,
it will be reflected in the report
of a responsible official.
They will cross your arms over your chest
and this is fatal,
because you can not
use Afrin
to breathe better.
It was fake that your hugs were convulsive
and your furies unpredictable.
Fake, the glass you still steam with your burps.
Fake, your nipples, your red freckles.
Last night you decided:
if I cannot sleep,
I’ll choose death.
But you could not have expected the leg of lamb to melt in your mouth,
soft,
milky,
on your tongue.
You could only say:
two childbirths,
ten abortions,
no orgasm.
You took a long sip of wine.
Vallejo also sought a leg of lamb
in the menu of La Coupole.
All watched his stupid eyes,
while he could only think about the quite ears of Beethoven,
He had asked his companion:
Why do not you love me anymore?
What did I do?
Where did I fail?
The sausage in the casserole left grease stains on his shirt.
Like you,
he felt compassion tired his body
and I tried to guess who would be born on this night,
while trying to fall asleep.
Dying
requires time and patience.

 

 

GRATED CARROT

The first suicide is unique.
They always ask you if it was an accident
or a sincere proposition of death.
They shove a tube up your nose,
hard,
it hurts,
and you learn to not disturb the neighbors.
When you begin to explain that
death-actually-seemed-like-the-only-way-out
or that you did it
to-fuck-up-your-husband-and-your-family
they have all turned their backs
and are watching the transparent tube,
retrieving the parade of your last supper.
Betting on whether its noodles or fried rice.
The doctor on duty coldly tells them:
it’s grated carrot.
“Disgusting,“ says the nurse with big lips.
They disposed of me furiously
because no one won the bet.
The saline dispersed quickly
and ten minutes later,
I was back at my house.
No space to mourn
nor time to feel cold and tremble.
People are unconcerned with death that comes from loving too much.
Child’s play
they say
as if children killed themselves every day.
I looked in Hammett for this exact page:
never tell a word about your life
in any book,
if you can help it.

 

 

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

They ask you
to whom will you leave your things when you die?
So I looked over my house
and its stuff.
There was nothing in it to give up,
but my rancid smell
And that rat.
The rat that stayed hostile and silent
waiting for it to occur
Useless, to feed it
and soften its bed with blue soap.
I waited for it every night,
anxious to see how its long mustache
would stop hiding the sharp and predatory teeth.
I was there,
staring sneaky
and unspeaking as a sphinx
hoping that my blood would run.
Futile waiting
death arrived inside
first, calm and definitive
I wrote your name on the wall
so the final sunburn,
at about ten am
drew a shadow in my will:
“The rat did not allow me to see the spring“
When dead,
I made the list.
Dinner at the best restaurant
for Ángeles and Carlos.
My books, my unpublished works for José Ignacio.
My dreams for Ibsen.
My credit card for Ybis.
My car for Alberto.
My double bed for Mario.
My memory for Salvador.
My loneliness for for La Negra
My Ismael Rivera records for La Negra.
My poems called “Grenade in Mouth” for La Negra.
My pain from adolescence and motherhood, for Pedro.
My ashes for Ernesto.
My laughter for Marina.
Last night,
told Ángeles and Carlos
if I cannot sleep,
I will choose death.
The leg of lamb was so tasty
that they barely heard me.
I remember that on one corner of Chacao,
she put her arms around me and said,
next friday we will invite you.
His hair cut short
and her happiness to have it that way
made me realize that she was not just Carlos’ silenced mother.
I rested my cheek on her shoulder.
It was only seconds,
but I felt that as the scissors cut through her mane,
something had changed.
Something that doesn’t go by her name
now haunting the sleepless and drunken nights
in the neighborhood of the family.
To die deliberately,
requires time and patience.
You evoke the gratuitous death of a son,
a thing that never happened to you.
The loss of objects
and the silence of a devastated house,
didn’t happen to you either.
The ferocious finger of an enemy pointing to you
as if without remorse.
It happens, but it’s not mortal.
Two births,
ten abortions
and no orgasm.
One good reason.
The silence of your lover when you ask him,
Why don’t you want me?
What did I fail?
and then the tour of those spaces quiet
and empty,
with you bent over,
awkward.
Validating that there is neither soap for the wash
nor starch for ironing
and at best
these oranges are rotten
Then you remember
being on a terrace at 7 am,
overlooking the sea,
and someone saying to you,
this gives me a fear of heights
but I love you.
And then,
returning to the city
and to the mazucamba of a naked joyful man.
You think again about what is deliberate.
It is not fate.
It is not vengeance.
It is one’s hand
sweaty palm,
touching her thigh.
Going back a little more
and recalling the uneasiness of your partner,
the shadowy stench
of your pleasure.
There is always a before
before dying.
Before,
I want to eat tortellinis in cream.
Or take a drink of Tanqueray.
Or be embraced with strong arms.
Or, as Caupolican says
that they put me in the presence of Maiquetia,
the most beautiful city in this whole country.
No one
that I know
has deliberated on their own disappearance.

 

 

DIAGNOSIS

Let’s see,
open your mouth.
Say aaaah.
Show me what your mother did when you were a girl.
Was that the secret?
Oral sex?
Manipulation?
Touch?
Manipulation?
Consider your uterus,
broad and outdated.
How many children passed through there?
The doctors told you
that nature awaited them.
But they just died.
And if they lived
some would have been morons
others more or less the same,
all premeditated out of loneliness.
You have problems with your teeth,
with slow digestion of the indecisive,
with the crunch of the occipital bone.
You’re just another patient.
Everyone would like to have been born in Kansas City
or in Amsterdam
or in Toronto.
Or at least
twenty years later.
Let me shake this ivory specimen.
verify the mixture’s color.
Disgusting,
that bad smell.

 

 

THE CALL

When I asked him why he had not called
he explained to me that he had been buried alive
and that he did not have a phone.
In this thin chicken lips,
there is,
or was not,
any daring.
Everything was strictly legal.
Is it because you do not believe in God?
If it wasn’t easy,
you wouldn’t try to do it.
Significance,
signifying,
significantly,
sign.
I went to the balcony
and looked at the park,
irritating brotherhood of screaming children
and calibrated birds.
Heard the remote control changing channels,
no sound.
I felt at my back
his desire to put on his pants
and leave.
I went to the kitchen to peel potatoes.

 

 

THE WALLS OF SPRING

I will not teach my child to work the land
not to smell the tang of the earth
not to sing hymns.
He will know that there are no crystal streams
no clean drinking water
His world will be hellish downpours
and dark plains.

Of cries and groans.
Of dry eyes and throats.
Of tortured bodies that no longer will be able to see or hear him.
He will know that it is not good to hear the voices of those who exalt the
color of the sky.

I’ll take him to Hiroshima. To Seveso. To Dachau.
His skin will fall piece by piece in front of the horror
and he will listen with sorrow to the bird’s song,

the laughter of the soldiers
the death squads
the walls in spring.

He will have the memory that we never had
and will believe in the violence
of those who believe in nothing.

 

Miyo Vestrini | Grenade in Mouth
Kenning Editions 2019
Translated by Anne Boyer and Cassandra Gillig