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Writer's pictureA Too Powerful Word

Mariela Cordero


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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