“The (impossible) articulation of dissidence: I think that is the challenge –whether in making somatic utterances or in making verbal utterances– both for feminism(s) and for the language of poetry. The texts that follow, therefore, are just an attempt (doomed to fail) to capture in writing this sort of limiting instability: always elusive and capricious”.
Land Breeze
Dawn won’t arrive if I don’t end up in the Kentucky
begging. A swig. If they don’t dry the sidewalk.
Dawn won’t arrive if I don’t feel that I’m not me
ever again. As though you and your shadow, and dry mouth.
Dawn won’t arrive if I don’t piss on tiptoes
in the toilet. It splashes me. I don’t give a fuck. I don’t want to get dry.
Dawn won’t arrive… It won’t if I don’t urinate
and if I’m not your whore, dry mouth. And I don’t want to get dry…
and I don’t wash myself. I don’t give a fuck. Sidewalks clean themselves
with the wind that comes from inside and dehydrates. It dehydrates me
(rancid mouth. The hangover. That wind that comes from inside.
Arc del teatre, de l’Est, Nou de la Rambla, the icy dust cloud.)
And the footpaths, drying. And the alcoholic dysphagia
of a whore. It’s me.
Who knows that
dawn won’t arrive if she doesn’t end up in the Kentucky
begging. A swig. Or begging to be the meat
of your shadow. Begging. Just a gesture from you
sliding on an ice cube or a rancid whisky
in a tube glass on the sidewalk. Abandoned.
As though never, as if it didn’t exist. Drying out
with the piss that reaches from that corner
where there are twenty cents. Rejected.
No one picks them up.
The original poem in Catalan was published at Dents de polpa, AdiA Edicions, 2015.
Crip is sexy
I don’t have words to describe
the violence of a body so naked
under clothes. I imagine
Frida Kahlo and Carol Rama:
penetrating one another. The beauty
of a pneumatic erection,
orthopaedic, ripping you
the shit between the buttocks:
shit to have a name,
shit to have skin,
shit of a womb tied in knots
with all the kids you won’t have.
But I
don’t have words to tell myself
the embarrassment of a body so naked
under clothes and I only know
to look at it through the key hole.
I imagine your presence
piercing me. The beauty
of a pneumatic erection,
orthopaedic, ripping me
the shit between the buttocks:
shit to have a name,
shit to have skin,
shit of a womb tied in knots
with all the kids I won’t have.
Because I
don’t have words to describe
the horror of being my own police
inside clothe
The original poem in Catalan was published at Kalàixnikov, Món de Llibres, 2017.
Exorcism
The womb was ripped from me as if aborting,
unchained, the concave promise bonding.
The dilapidated ellipse from some fugitive hollow hands
was collapsed in me, regurgitated.
The offering was crumbled, the verb was denied and
the poured amniotic promises were broken away
- turning arc the curve of hysteria.
The womb was unlocked from me as if aborting,
wretched, the concave promise was withdrawing.
The precise rotation axis was broken from me,
the skeleton was dislocated from me at the vanishing point,
the horizontal line was shaken and
pulled me from the threads called dementia
- turning arc the curve of hysteria.
The womb was ripped from me as if aborting,
discounted, the concave promise returning to me.
The flowering within my belly was dismembered,
the margins were fugitively cleared.
The flight was strangled, the vertical was flapped and
the precipice of insanity was broken open
- turning arc the curve of hysteria.
The original poem in Catalan was published at Kalàixnikov, Món de Llibres, 2017.
Maria Sevilla
Badalona, 1990. She thrived on bias and living on the periphery of the outskirts. She spent her teenage years listening to punk, grunge and trash while discovering the comforting warmth of literature. She studied Catalan Studies at the University of Barcelona. When finished, she began her PhD thesis (ongoing) on The Passion According to Rennée Vivien (La passió segons Renée Vivien) by Maria-Mercè Marçal. In 2015, she published her first collection of poems, Teeth of Pulp (Dents de polpa, AdiA) followed by Kalashnikov (Kalàixnikov, Món de Llibres)in 2017.Since January 2019 she has been one of the three programmers of l’Horiginal.