Issue 21

Fall 2019

The Move

Karla Marrufo
Translated by Allison A. deFreese

we arrived at midday,

with our luggage in hand

the sun a cement square

stretching out beneath our feet,

the sky a sharp blow to the face—

a sting of dust,

a scratch on the cheek

syllable by syllable, the valve of honest words

slowly opened:

sewer    cistern        foreigner    neighborhood     bedroom

welcome

syllable by syllable, this drip of silent revelations:

hand in hand, we learn to breathe the air,

inhaling only smoke

to savor the sunrise of an unknown city,

to discover it again in dreams,

to promise we will never live on loans

hand in hand, sometimes the world is made whole, and that is enough,

easy as child’s play

while it lasts

hand in hand, the night dissolves with its ghosts, leaving us only the cloak

of an unfinished story

together,

blood pulsing to the heartbeats

of our fear, we learn to remember

out of obligation

out of fondness

out of rage

or by vocation

because this is all there is

we arrived at midday

light as certain birds

the toes of my scuffed sneakers had lost their direction

their sense of smell,

but ventured forward a little anyway

toward blood,

toward the river, now red, unveiling a channel

that leads to the mouth of the sewer

syllable by syllable the excuses flowed:

the height of the building         vertigo             dangerous

since then and                                 forever

my hand remains alone,

closing in on itself and watching as life

transforms

into dark matter.

About the Author

Karla Marrufo (Mérida, México) holds a Doctorate in Hispanic-American Literature from la Universidad Veracruzana, and recently finished postdoctoral studies at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of México). Her work has been recognized through several prestigious Latin American literary awards, among them: the 2005-2007 National Wilberto Cantón Award in Playwriting (Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia “Wilberto Cantón”) for her play Lluvia para siete insomnes/Rain for Seven Insomniacs; the XVI José Díaz Bolio Poetry Prize (XVI Premio de poesía “José Díaz Bolio”) for La ciudad en ti /The City within You (Centro Cultural ProHispen, 2016); and the 2014 National Dolores Castro in Narration (Premio Nacional de Narrativa “Dolores Castro”), which led to the publication of her novel Mayo/May by the Ayuntamiento de Aguascalientes, México the same year. She also received a fellowship from the Programa de Estímulo a la Creación y al Desarrollo Artístico en Yucatán (the PECDA, or Program for the Expansion and Development of Creativity and the Arts in the Yucatán), which resulted in the publication of her book Mérida lo invisible/Mérida the Invisible (Consejo Editorial de la Secretaría de la Cultura y las Artes de Yucatán, 2013; also published under the title Arquitecturas de lo invisible/ Architecture of the Invisible in its second printing).

About the Translator

Allison A. deFreese’s original work and literary translations have appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Indiana Review, Southwestern American Literature, Borderlands, Asymptote; Southword (Ireland), and Poetry Kanto (Japan). She has two book-length poetry translations, as well as a translation of a text on the Yucatec Maya language, forthcoming in 2020.

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