Mariela Cordero (Valencia, 1985) is a lawyer, poet, writer, translator and visual artist. Her poetry has been published in several international anthologies and she has received some distinctions among them: Third Prize of Poetry Alejandra Pizarnik Argentina (2014). First Prize in the II Iberoamerican Poetry Contest Euler Granda, Ecuador (2015) Second Prize for Poetry, Concorso Letterario Internazionale Bilingüe Tracceperlameta Edizioni, Italy (2015). First Place in International Poetry Contest #AniversarioPoetasHispanos mentioning literary quality,Spain (2016)She is the author of the book of poems "El cuerpo de la duda" Ediciones Publicarte Caracas, Venezuela (2013) Her poems have been translated into Hindi, Czech, Serbian, Shona, Uzbek, Romanian, Macedonian, Bengali, English, Arabic, Chinese,Hebrew Russian and Polish. She currently coordinates the sections #PoesíaVenezolana and #PoetasdelMundo in the Revista Abierta de Poesía Poémame (Spain).
Interruption of the Light
When the lights went out
Our hearts were inhabited by fateful fables
the night-once beloved-was baptized
by the sowing of panic
We were close to one another
And blood spread in the penumbra
Like an alluring perfume.
Many navigated by scent
And desired to bathe in a convulsing red river
When the lights returned, hours later
We didn't recognize our faces
Splashed with the bestial grins.
Our land was filled with bodies,
mutilated,
We listened to moans of pain,
Saw our hands stained with blame
And it was too late when we discovered
That we, too, were fatally wounded.
Love the Shadow
Invasions of light are usually corrosive
to what lives in the shadows.
It is easy to love the dark,
the coldness with the smell of torrid vegetation.
Peace and danger amalgamated
in the mouth of the inviolable black horizon.
Swim forever in an ocean woven of gloom,
protected only by the irregular flapping
of birds dressed like the night.
Without hurtful illuminations the meaning can be spilled,
you can embrace languid hopes
and caress the symptoms of a rainy and exquisite love.
In the shadow we are all dark stars.
A Dream for the Summer
In your hand will dance an unexpected map,
invented to find fountains and water accidents
in the avenues of this city that is melting.
The dawn will know how to hide its dew
when our thirst turns violent.
The night will lie hesitantly on the grass.
Our only instinct will be to seek
under the skirts of the earth
and kiss it until the center of its humidity.
This season will blossom as a prelude to fire.
Summer will be the liberation of the ardor
that always strikes us within.
The unprecedented dance that will go out to heat the street and the bodies.
The First.
I am the first
I'm at the beginning
Of time
In the middle of the gloom
In the particle
Of this sunset
And to the edge
Of the collapse.
I am all
And none.
Public Body
I don’t inhabit a country; I inhabit a body
—broken—
meekly unfurling
over voracious ruins
and breathing the smoke of burnt days.
I don’t inhabit a country; I inhabit a body
without bloom
that suffers
stripped of respite
the indelible tremors
of the recently raped.
I don’t inhabit a country; I inhabit a body
flush with bones
trained
like knives
that turn cruelly
against whoever dares
maneuver
a tentative caress
across its devastated surface.
This body
does not recognize all that is not
a bruise,
an unclosable wound,
or an abrupt act of depredation.
I don’t inhabit a country; I inhabit a body
—ravaged—
that dances with massacre
and, impregnated by the most wretched
of the rabid pack,
only knows to birth death.
I don’t inhabit a country; I inhabit a public body
so diminished
that it’s hurt by my faint footsteps
and tormented by the murmur of my hope.
I curl into myself,
into a tiny docile place
lethargic
from the irregular pulse
of its fabled, bygone beauty
as I devour
each detail of its meager heat.
I curl into myself
and hope that morning
astonishes us with proof
that both
this body I inhabit and I
—survive—
the long night
of the pack.
Translation by Aaron Devine
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