Indran Amirthanayagam

Luis Manuel Pimentel

They Were Close to Almond Trees When They Believed They Were In Love: Luis Manuel Pimenetel, translated by Indran Amirthanayagam

Pierna

Una pierna flaca viene a mi
quiero tocarla
masajear su pantorrilla con poca carne,
sentir que sus huesos me raspen,
tocar los muslos
ser un gato, un perro,
descubrir las alas de su vientre,
colgar la pantaleta en algún lugar de la ventana;
quitarle la parte de arriba del torso,
ser, en la forma primaria, segundaria, terciaria.

Ya siento los cuchillos afilados de
sus ojos en mi garganta.
Los cierra.
Dos piedras chochan echando chispas,
se prende la cama.

**
Leg

A thin legs approaches me
I want to touch it,
massage its fleshless calf,
feel the bones rasp me,
touch the thighs, be
a cat, a dog, discover
the wings of its belly,
hang the panty somewhere in the window,
take off the part above the torso,
be in primary, secondary, tertiary form.

I already feel the sharpened knives
of her eyes in my throat.
I close them.
Two stones emit sparks as they hit,
the bed burns.

—————————————
Las bestias

A esta hora las golondrinas están durmiendo
y los venados ya tienen hambre,
les llevo el mensaje de tus labios
con los que fundo el deseo
y la pasión desmesurada junto
a las piedras que seguimos lanzando al rio.

Tus manos quieren volver apretar el mundo
y jugar a que llegamos a la cima de la montaña
caminando por encima de la nieve

Amor
el ave que veo desde la ventana nos llama
invitándonos a observar el reflejo
de las distintas bestias que guardamos
en nuestros tórax

The Beasts

The swallows are sleeping at this time
and the deer are already hungry,
I carry them the message of your lips
with which I melt desire and passion
without measure together
with stones we keep throwing into the river.

Your hands want to return to holding
the world tight and to play that we have
arrived at the top of the mountains
walking above the snow

Love
the bird I see from the window
is calling, inviting us to observe
the reflection of the distinct beasts
we keep in our thorax.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He is the author of twenty five books of poetry and poetry in translation, including Seer (Hanging Loose Press, 2024), The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, Blue Window (Dialogos Books) The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press 2020),Coconuts on Mars (Paperwall, 2019), Uncivil War (Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR), Canada, 2013), and the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose, 1993). Amirthanayagam is a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellow in poetry, and a past fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com), edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly; curates the reading series Poetry at Beltway Editions, He serves on the Board of DC-ALT. His blog is http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com

LUIS MANUEL PIMENTEL. Barquisimeto - Venezuela, 1979. Poet, storyteller. His book Esquina de la mesa hechizada (2011) won an award at the I Bienal Nacional de Literatura Rafael Zárraga in Venezuela. He has published the poetry books Figuras Cromañonas (2007) and Canción de cuna para Ananda (2016). Estuvieron cerca los almendrones/ mientras creímos haber amado (2021). His work has appeared in more than 11 literary anthologies. Vice-president of the NGO Poetas Sin Fronteras Internacional, he currently lives in Puebla – México, and is Editor of the Revista Filigramma, Managing Editor of Ablucionistas, and Managing Director of the semiotics journal El Signo inVisible.