Ross Gay
Nació en Youngstown, Ohio. Es autor de Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), libro finalista del National Book Award; Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); y Against Which (Cavankerry Press, 2006). También ha publicado los chapbooks Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens (en co-autoría con Aimee Nezhukumatathil) y River (en co-autoría con Richard Wehrenberg, Jr.). Ross Gay obtuvo la Maestría en Poesía del Sarah Lawrence College y el Doctorado en Inglés de la Universidad de Temple. Actualmente es profesor en la Universidad de Indiana.
OBRA:
Against Which. CavanKerry Press. October 2006. ISBN 978-1-933880-00-6.
Bringing the Shovel Down. University of Pittsburgh Press. 23 January 2011. ISBN 978-0-8229-9119-9.
Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens,. Organic Weapon Arts. 2014. ISBN 978-0-9827106-7-8.
River. Monster House Press. 1 December 2014.
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. University of Pittsburgh Press. 16 January 2015. ISBN 978-0822963318.
Cuando después de algún tiempo, finalmente,
sus hijos están con su papá
es ser hundido en esta inmundicia
empuñado empalado este ahogo este lodo
este kung fu jalando tanga
este reptil pre culeada
de sorbos gruñidos
chillidos siseos
nuestros ojos idos extraños y vaporosos
nuestros dientes se retuercen en encías
relámpago en nuestras espaldas se arquea
cuando pongo a leer mi lengua a través de ti
los garabatos se arrastran por paredes escarpadas de tu cráneo
un poco como chupar sesos
pero más literario
tengo miedo que te esté haciendo daño
y parar mi flujo
pero dices por favor no
y muerdes un agujero en mi garganta
a través del cual la luna
desabrocha su sombrero de hueso
sumerge seca
y sorbe
dentro del pantano que hemos hecho
de nuestra miseria.
(Traducción de Giancarlo Huapaya)
When After Some Time, Finally,
Your Kids are at Their Dad’s
is to be sunk in this muck-
fisted tussle this must this mud
this panty-yanking kung-fu
this reptile pre-fuck
of slurps and growls
of grunts and hisses
our eyes gone weird and filmy
our teeth squirming in our gums
the lightning writhing off our backs
and when I put my tongue
through you to read with it
the scrawl crawling your skull’s craggy walls
which is kind of like
sucking your brains out
but more literary
I get scared I’m hurting you and stop
but you say please don’t
and bite a hole in my throat
through which the moon
unbuckling her bonnet of bone
plunges parched
and slurping
into the swamp we’ve made
of our want.
Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew
Today, November 28th, 2005, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
I am staring at my hands in the common pose
of the hungry and penitent. I am studying again
the emptiness of my clasped hands, wherein I see
my sister-in-law days from birthing
the small thing which will erase,
in some sense, the mystery of my father’s departure;
their child will emerge with ten fingers,
and toes, howling, and his mother will hold
his gummy mouth to her breast and the stars
will hang above them and not one bomb
will be heard through that night. And my brother will stir,
waking with his wife the first few days, and he will run
his long fingers along the soft terrain of his child’s skull
and not once will he cover the child’s ears
or throw the two to the ground and cover them
from the blasts. And this child will gaze
into a night which is black and quiet.
She will pull herself up to her feet
standing like a buoy in wind-grooved waters,
falling, and rising again, never shaken
by an explosion. And her grandmother
will watch her stumble through a park or playground,
will watch her sail through the air on swings,
howling with joy, and never once
will she snatch her from the swing and run
for shelter because again, the bombs are falling.
The two will drink cocoa, the beautiful lines
in my mother’s face growing deeper as she smiles
at the beautiful boy flipping the pages of a book
with pictures of dinosaurs, and no bomb
will blast glass into this child’s face, leaving
the one eye useless. No bomb will loosen the roof,
crushing my mother while this child sees
plaster and wood and blood where once his Nana sat.
This child will not sit with his Nana, killed by a bomb,
for hours. I will never drive across two states
to help my brother bury my mother this way. To pray
and weep and beg this child to speak again.
She will go to school with other children,
and some of them will have more food than others,
and some will be the witnesses of great crimes,
and some will describe flavors with colors, and some
will have seizures, and some will read two grade
levels ahead, but none of them will tip their desks
and shield their faces, nor watch as their teacher
falls out of her shoes, clinging to the nearest child.
This child will bleed
and cry and curse his living parents
and slam doors and be hurt and hurt again. And she will feel
clover on her bare feet. Will swim in frigid waters.
Will climb trees and spy cardinal chicks blind
and peeping. And no bomb will kill this child’s parents.
No bomb will kill this child’s grandparents. No bomb
will kill this child’s uncles. And no bomb will kill
this child, who will raise to his mouth
some small morsel of food of which there is more
while bombs fall from the sky like dust
brushed from the hands of a stupid god and children
whose parents named them will become dust
and their parents will drape themselves in black
and dream of the tiny mouths which once reared
to suckle or gasp at some bird sailing by
and their tears will make a mud which will heal nothing,
and today I will speak no word
except the name of that child whose absence
makes the hands of her parents shiver. A name
which had a meaning.
As will yours.
—for Mikayla Grace
To My Best Friend’s Big Sister
One never knows
does one
how one comes to be
standing
most ways to naked
in front of one’s pal’s
big sister who has, simply
by telling me to,
gotten me to shed
all but the scantest
flap of fabric
and twirl before her
like a rotisserie
chicken as she
observes
and offers thoughtful critique
of my just
pubescent physique
which is not
a thing
to behold
what with my damp trunks
clinging to
my damp crotch
and proportion and grace
are words the definition
of which I don’t yet know
nor did I ask the
the mini-skirted scientist
sitting open-legged
and now shoeless
on my mom’s couch
though it may have been
this morning
while chucking papers
I heard through the Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock
pulsing my walkman
a mourning
dove struggling
snared in the downspout’s
mouth and without
lowering the volume
or missing a verse
I crinkled the rusted aluminum
trap enough that with
a little wriggle
it was free
and did not
at once
wobble to some
powerline but sat on my hand
and looked at me
for at least
one verse of “It Takes Two”
sort of bobbing
its head
and cooing once or twice
before flopping off
but that seems very long ago
now
as I pirouette
my hairless and shivering
warble of acne and pudge
burning a hole
in the rug as big sis tosses off
Greek and Latin words
like pectorals and
gluteus maximus
standing to show me
what she means
with her hands on my love
handles and now
I can see myself
trying to add some gaudy flourish
to this memory
to make of it
a fantasy
which is why I linger
hoping to mis-recall
the child
me
make of me
someone I wasn’t
make of this
experience the beginning
of a new life
gilded doors
kicked open blaring
trombones a full
beard Isaac Hayes singing in the background
and me thundering forth
on the wild steed
of emergent manhood
but I think this child was not
that child
obscuring, as he was, his breasts
by tucking his hands
into his armpits
and having never even made love
to himself
yet was not
really a candidate for much
besides the chill
of a minor shame
that he would forget for 15 years
one of what would prove
to be many
such shames
stitched together like a quilt
with all its just legible
patterning which could be a thing
heavy and warm
to be buried in
or instead might be held up
to the light
where we see the threads
barely holding
so human and frail
so beautiful and sad and small
from this remove.
For Some Slight I Can’t Quite Recall
Was with the pudgy hands of a thirteen-year-old
that I took the marble of his head
just barely balanced on his reedy neck
and with the brute tutelage
of years fighting the neighbor kids
and too the lightning of my father’s
stiff palm I leaned the boy’s head
full force into the rattly pane of glass
on the school bus and did so with the eagle of justice
screaming in my ear as he always does
for the irate and stupid I made the window sing
and bend and the skinny boy too
whose eyes grew to lakes lit by mortar fire
bleating with his glasses crooked
I’m not an animal walking in place
on the green vinyl seat looking far away
and me watching him and probably almost smiling
at the song and dance I made of the weak
and skinny boy who towering above me
became even smaller and bizarre and birdlike
pinned and beating his wings frantically
against his cage and me probably
almost smiling as is the way of the stupid
and cruel watching the weak and small
and innocent not getting away.
.