Brenda Shaughnessy
Brenda Shaughnessy (Okinawa, 1970), es una poeta norteamericana. Creció en California y se licenció en literatura y estudios de género en la Universidad de California. También obtuvo un posgrado en la Universidad de Columbia. Sus poemas han aparecido en Best American Poetry, BOMB, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review y The Yale Review. Ha publicado los libros de poemas Our Andromeda, Human Dark with Sugar e Interior with Sudden Joy. Actualmente, vive en Brooklyn con su familia e imparte clases en Columbia University y Lehman College.
Postfeminismo
Hay dos tipos de personas, los soldados y las mujeres,
como dijo Virginia Woolf. Ambos son sólo decorativos.
Bueno, es demasiado decir. La división es técnica: vírgenes y lobos.
Ahora podemos elegir. Dos niñas entran a un bar,
una pide una copa de shirley temple. El chulo de Shirley Temple
entra y dice no te arrepentirás. Ella es una buena
pieza pero no sale barata. Yo misma temo menos
a los depredadores que a caminar
por el cuerpo de mi madre. Eso es engañoso, porque implica más
que andar desnuda. Nivelemos: tú te vas humeándote en tu
gris habitación, yo soy voraz sola. Lencería metálica,
en blanco, descocada. Y extraordinarios cigarrillos negros
en una cestita hecha a mano. Quién de nosotros teje
al mundo con borrones aún más rápidos de armada
seducción? Tu guerra-contra-los-matones*, mis medias con liguero?
Ascéticos o carnívoros. Los hombres pulverizarán tu delicado barniz
incluso si los abandonas antes de que se haga de día. Los cerdos
montan a las sirenas en manada. Ah, la carne, la tecnocarne,
hay dos tipos de personas. Calientes con luz
mixta, borrachos de insultos. Tú y yo.
De Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1999)
*NOTA DE LA TRADUCTORA. La broma de modificar la expresión “warondrugs” (la guerra contra las drogas, eslogan/promesa/amenaza típica de las fuerzas políticas conservadoras en Estados Unidos) por “waronthugs” (“thug” significa matón, mafioso o gángster, pero también remite a los memes de “thuglife” del mundo de internet, matiz acrecentado por el uso de guiones – – -) es difícilmente traducible; de ahí esta paráfrasis un poco extensa.
Traductora:Berta García Faet
Postfeminism
There are two kinds of people, soldiers and women,
as Virginia Woolf said. Both for decoration only.
Now that is too kind. It’s technical: virgins and wolves.
We have choices now. Two little girls walk into a bar,
one orders a shirley temple. Shirley Temple’s pimp
comes over and says you won’t be sorry. She’s a fine
piece of work but she don’t come cheap. Myself, I’m
in less fear of predators than of walking around
in my mother’s body. That’s sneaky, that’s more
than naked. Let’s even it up: you go on fuming in your
gray room. I am voracious alone. Blank and loose,
metallic lingerie. And rare black-tipped cigarettes
in a handmade basket case. Which of us weaves
the world together with a quicker blur of armed
seduction: your war-on-thugs, my body stockings.
Ascetic or carnivore. Men will crack your glaze
even if you leave them before morning. Pigs
ride the sirens in packs. Ah, flesh, technoflesh,
there are two kinds of people. Hot with mixed
light, drunk on insult. You and me.
A Poet’s
If it takes me all day,
I will get the word freshened out of this poem.
I put it in the first line, then moved it to the second,
and now it won’t come out.
It’s stuck. I’m so frustrated,
so I went out to my little porch all covered in snow
and watched the icicles drip, as I smoked
a cigarette.
Finally I reached up and broke a big, clear spike
off the roof with my bare hand.
And used it to write a word in the snow.
I wrote the word snow.
I can’t stand myself.
Artless
is my heart. A stranger
berry there never was,
tartless.
Gone sour in the sun,
in the sunroom or moonroof,
roofless.
No poetry. Plain. No
fresh, special recipe
to bless.
All I’ve ever made
with these hands
and life, less
substance, more rind.
Mostly rim and trim,
meatless
but making much smoke
in the old smokehouse,
no less.
Fatted from the day,
overripe and even
toxic at eve. Nonetheless,
in the end, if you must
know, if I must bend,
waistless,
to that excruciation.
No marvel, no harvest
left me speechless,
yet I find myself
somehow with heart,
aloneless.
With heart,
fighting fire with fire,
fightless.
That loud hub of us,
meat stub of us, beating us
senseless.
Spectacular in its way,
its way of not seeing,
congealing dayless
but in everydayness.
In that hopeful haunting
(a lesser
way of saying
in darkness) there is
silencelessness
for the pressing question.
Heart, what art you?
War, star, part? Or less:
playing a part, staying apart
from the one who loves,
loveless.
Card 19: The Sun
When you show yourself to the woman
you love, you don’t know your fear
is not fear, itself. You have never been good,
but now you are so good,
who are you? Is it the liquidity of her skin
that bathes the world for you,
or her face, captured like a she-lion
in your own flesh?
This summerbed is soft with ring upon ring
upon ring of wedding, the kind
that doesn’t clink upon contact, the kind
with no contract,
the kind in which the gold is only (only!) light.
Cloud covers and lifts,
and sleep and night and soon enough, love’s
big fire laughs at a terrible burn,
but only (only!) because pain absorbs excess
joy and you shouldn’t flaunt
your treasures in front of all day’s eyes.
.