by Lily Pond
And the woman mud smeared all over her breathless points and gasps at the little deer you show her, pierced by arrows. …
Laugh and cuss scrawl on her body with earth and blood: I hope the exit is joyful. And I hope never to come back.
hourglass
Because I am running out of legs, life.
Free. Free of.
She offers her palette like a heart. Paints fertile earth: green vines and leaves spring from her womb, her heart and love while blood drops into veins that take root in the soil in front of her.
She nourishes the earth with her body, the woman with her body. She feeds the earth
fecund one. darling earthling.
soil, love
She holds herself above her—lowers feeding folds and folds of fertile, gorgeous earth.
She smiles. You are sweet. And Diego too would want you. And she drags her down—rooted to the soil
stone spine
vagina fused
to the throbbing earth
sunken
fucked.
The feminine earth. Body of a woman, like a rose in your darkening theater. And you smile, mutter, not in any known language, I am eating the earth. I need the earth in my mouth now. A rose opening. Chuca. Why do you live you say to the woman. Perfect one, unbroken.
Put it into my mouth now.
A tree grows inside you. I have seen it. Leaves sprout from your veins. Your blood nourishes the earth.
You drag your sexual entrails to this sacred place—this final place of fury, desire—your tears are nails and paint—abyss of birds—ruined spine, leg.
No. No. Blood shall be shed. Kiss me. Kiss me again.
And she is furious, a fury flailing, screaming. Fuck me again. Tortured. Replenished. Again.
Hung upside down, naked tied, in an attempt to strengthen her spine. The blood is rushing to her head.
A little deer. 9 arrows.
And you are left in the end with all that pain cannot take from you.
“Many nights she hung upside down from the bed’s canopy,” they whisper. In pain. While the women sat and whispered, prayed. Pray:
Come to me now, down the dirt road, my little one—you remind me of a little girl I once knew at the Prepatoria (smooth and perfect)—before the accident.
And you sit laughing with all that pain cannot take.
And who could refuse you? With your dark dares
your outrageous, your flagrant
your stare
Look, you say, pointing to the little deer pierced by arrows. It’s head of a saint. It’s head of a cursing martyr. It’s leather corset. A grief-induced hallucination. A sex-induced or pain-induced hallucination. Look there: the open fruit. The lacerated melons, pomegranates revealing their juices, juicy—just a little skin pulled back on that one. Pulpy, hurt and splayed.
She is arranging and rearranging her long black hair and earth. The trinkets in her hair. The arrangement on the dressing table. She looks over at the woman in the mirror. Applies paint. Turns her radiant. Free. She stares and offers her heart-shaped palette—a little free.
Men ascend double staircases looking for you.
But you are not there.
You are nailed by roses now and gently fastened by the girl to this extraordinary world.
You are in the midnight garden spooning earth, devouring gorgeousness.
because I miss you with all my heart and my blood. Diego.
heart and blood solemn
feed me slowly tonight
filling my mouth
All the distance, earth diminishes between us
thrust, dirt
I carve a rose in his chest. My small solidarity. If I could carve with thorns Diego into your allegiance. Fidelity. Carve wild fidelity—my blood sport, my art—blood pulsing, blood flowing—beauty—beating like an injured thing. If I could carve my pain. Draw blood.
I penetrate the sex of the whole earth. And she falls into dream. And in the dream you are free from your pain a little, though it is never far off—and you are walking down a dirt road.
You cradle a skull made of sugar in your hands.
And I am sucking the blood from my brushes, free. And I am looking in the mirror and I am painting the earth and I am sucking on the earth. And I stop to bring Diego his lunch and the white woman with the pen says, and the gringa yells, “Frida leave that fat man for a while!” And the gringa is sucking on a pen and writing this: “walk away from pain, down the dirt path.”
Easy for you to say, chuca. Easy for you.
With your pale pornography of hope, your “dirt road alone,” your pretty ink-stained hands, your mouth. A rage of perfect white.
I am touching the tip of your cervix—which is the earth. A plum. I am sifting, gorging, adoring your earth. As you paint your pain. Your lamentations, your incantations, your seductions in paint—pain.
No blood.
No blood.
children of poverty
No blood.
butchered
shall be shed
with all the assasinated friends
What do you know of pain? she asks. Biting into my neck. Forcing me into her burning, thorned corner. Torched: if you could feel what I feel. …
Leather corsets. Plaster corsets. Steel. Let us descend into perfect earth, black earth, free. Fertile. Carving roses. Put your hands all over me. Replenishing and torture. I am fucking the earth. Your brown, round, your dark tendrils, arrogant, gorgeous, bejeweled, bedecked. And I am holding the world tonight, I am holding tenderness. I am holding the broken terra cotta of your body at last. A sugar skull dissolving. A rose beneath your tongue. And the world turns magenta as you come and we dream for a moment something whole, no blood.
Still the world turns puce—your rotting foot, your poor paw. She laughs, why you? Why you pendaya so perfect, smooth. She grows monstrously tender in a second. Love me sweetly now. The way the air caresses the earth. No blood shall be shed. …
Smooth and perfect thigh tonight.
Huh? Upside down … A grittiness. A gritty taste. A furred lining. Something furry. The world. The dark … a furred thing in the dark—stars … a rubbing all over with earth and leaves. Furred lip like an open fruit. She reaches for her palette. Tendrils. Let me live, she begs. In pain and dread she is desiring, devouring time and the earth. I am holding the world. A sugar skull.
There’s a fire in the earth where you lay.
Swear my linda, swear. My juiced-up plum, plump … my little goose—my gringa. Swear you will—swear: fuck me blind tonight. And she is drawing all the fruits of this world. Take my sight.
Hurt of the earth. Fur-lined. Pleasure of the soil and dirt. Free. Free of—that odd exaggerated step.
And pain is a rose beneath your tongue dissolving.
And pain is just another way there.
Frida, the dirt road is uneven, far. Your country blood and broken. The road of pain and tears is broken. Fuck me again until we’re left for dead. Exhausting, unmoving, bereft. She opens one eye and laughs like a wild thing. Bats her lashes. Takes the little spoon from around her neck and feeds me dirt. Free. She writes Diego, my love all over my body in mud. She writes free, Frida. Free of—
You write Diego in your juices all over her body, my body. And as night approaches you write luz, you paint light in fury. Fuck me blind in the failing light. Make my way there easier. And she is devouring everything, everything with her eyes. I beg of you she whispers. If you want me to go, take my sight.
Once again desire has made a ruin of us. A pile of loamy soil—a dome; or concave—a grave. And sweet pain is a tablet in your hand dissolving, a—… beneath your tongue. A sugary skull. A rose. Where does your life go?
No.
No.
No.
No blood
No blood
No blood shall be shed …
No blood shall be shed
You are walking down a dirt road (your people, body broken).
a little free.
No blood shall be shed
She presses me up against an earthen wall.
Knife through the succulent melon knife through—
She closes her eyes and touches my unbroken body, my smooth and perfect thigh. She trembles, whispers, bites my ear but gently, blurs. Take me to the other side.
And the workers singing working songs.
And the women singing freedom songs.
No blood shall be shed.
Smooth and perfect thigh tonight.
She glistens, love me tenderly this time.
No blood shall be shed anywhere in the world tonight.
Emperiality Saws South
Anthony Robbins
One, no, there are others, two,
three bottles of anejo, and plantains, aquacates,
and sardines fried by su
prima, la chica negra, dura, muy
linda, de donde Bayamo, the only
one who cooks well because she’s not so hungry.
And then one hour haciendo
amor upstairs en el calor
con la mas beldad adentro el mundo
(ningún mierda).
Stare for an hour at the cobwebs on the ceiling
while your, our?, baby keeps crying. You
nurse us, but you, darling, no quiere abierto
el ventilador. No fan? Tu está loca,
and you have other silly superstitions.
And your ass is sharp (e)bony, okay? Okay, you can’t stop
dancing, but in bed, por favor.
Be still! Push me again, and … Okay. I am
Heat. Com’ere, yes. Here. Closer. Listen.
I am Heat, and I know where the devil sleeps:
Closeby. You say you want to work?
Está bien. Tomorrow, when she gets up,
not early, I’ll wake you. We’ll go with her.
Resins for Aurelia
Mayra Santos-Febres, translated by Nathan Budoff and Lydia Platon Lazaro
Aurelia, Aurelia dile al conde que suba dile al
conde que suba que suba suba por la ventana
Aurelia, Aurelia tell the Count to come up tell the
Count to come up to come up come up through the window
—Lyrics of a popular “Bomba”
NOBODY KNOWS HOW THAT FAD STARTED, but in less than three months all the whores in Patagonia had slaves on their ankles. You could see them walking around the town plaza on their day off, eating fruit and nut-flavored ice cream, or on the streets near the river. You could see them buying groceries at the marketplace with that little chain sparkling in the distance, the secret signal that disclosed their occupation. The sparkle down there on the ankle, the conspicuous way of calling it a “slave” would light up eyes and produce frowns all up and down the Humacao. In the direction of the river went the prostitutes’ feet wearing slaves, and in the direction of the little chain went the eyes of all the women and men in town. Lucas, for one, under his wide straw hat, pruning scissors in hand, would stop feeding manure to the shade trees to see them go by, with hunger in his eyes.
His grandmother had taught him the craft of caring for flowers. Nana Poubart brought him as a child from Nevis to that grey town with a river that would devour the trees on the plaza. He didn’t remember anything from his native land, only the concave terrain in his grandmother’s breasts, the woman whose tongue got tangled up in sharper inflections than the rest of the inhabitants of the town; r’s and t’s a little more acute, more difficult to decipher among the sounds that crowded the air in Patagonia. The air in Patagonia—usually stinking of the swelling river, of humid mattresses, of pee—stopped where the grandmother’s air began, full of her concoctions of plants and flowers. Their house, although it was humble and flanked by the huts that served as brothels, always smelled like the resins of shade trees. The wood floors were shined with an amber-colored cream made out of the capa tree with beeswax and the essence of jasmine flowers. Right in front of the Conde Rojo bar, Nana had planted and braided a lemon tree and a guava tree. From the moment she planted the trees she nurtured them with apt fertilizers for gentle and abundant growth: whore shit mixed with menstrual blood. Lucas was ashamed when Nana would send him to the back door of the Conde Rojo to ask the madams for their pupils’ basins. He protested with his feet and with his chest, but Nana would have nothing to do with bad-mouthing, nor with gossip inspired in false modesty. According to Nana, there was nothing better to grow shade trees, nor medium-sized fruit trees, on this side of the Caribbean.
That is how Lucas became used to whores; to their smells; to their textures; to their looks of complicity. He slept with them from prepubescence, starting at the age of twelve. Under the pretext of giving him their basins full of shit, the madams and the older whores would make him come into the Conde. There they would force him to wait while they changed their clothes, powdered their fallen or full breasts with perfumed talc and multi-colored powder puffs made of foamy cotton. Sometimes they would commit him to the task of tying the garters that held up their stockings, or to undoing the buttons of their corsets. And after these furtive frictions, some of them would French kiss Lucas on the mouth, performing maternal affections on him, shitting amorously before him in the basins, and guiding him once again back to the entrance of the huts.
Meanwhile, Nana would wait for him, sitting in the mahogany and straw rocking chair on the balcony of the little house. She had braided the guava tree in the entrance herself, with her ironing hands, hands that washed rich people’s clothes in the river. She taught Lucas how one takes the branches of young trees to make designs on their trunks. “The fingers,” she would say while she spread whore shit on them, adding the resins from rubber trees and honey, “it is important to know where to place the fingers and how much pressure to apply to bend the tender cortex of the trees without breaking them.” Year after year, Nana sensitized his fingertips to the extent that Lucas learned to take the pulse of trees, the shade ones, the fruit ones, and the flower ones. He could feel the sap running through their veins, and through careful measurements of temperatures and the pressures of their liquids, he knew if they needed water, pruning, or a bleeding to release excess resins from their interiors.
What Lucas could never get used to was to the pungent smell of whore shit. Even though he continued going to get the basins each time Nana sent him, and continued sleeping with them, he could never sink his hands into the basin with good cheer. He convinced his grandmother to let him try other methods, and he set upon the task of scouting the river banks with a macheté and a coffee can, bleeding the sap of all the bushes and tree trunks and plants on the littoral.
Nana also knew how to extract the spirit from plants, how to use the leaves to cure love sickness, colic, diarrhea, vomiting, brothel fevers, and other aches and pains that troubled her neighbors from Patagonia. She knew about teas against the pain of menstrual cramps, and about orange infusions to quiet down weeping and tremors, soursop leaves to alleviate bloating, cataplasms made with resin of the hog plum plant to revive the skin’s heat. She knew a million of these secrets. And in the same way that she mended roots and trunks and foliage, she also mended bones, broken vertebrae, women’s eyes that had “accidentally” run into doors, purplish bruises, blood clots, sprained ankles, miscarriages and abortions. It was healing people that supported Nana and her grandson. But Lucas didn’t find what she did with her plants and her hands in the service of people that interesting. The people smelled like shit; they gave him only a fortuitous pleasure that left him lonely, melancholy, and confused right after the last tremor. Not trees. They had their thickness and their richness; the soft humid green of the avocado leaves, the skin of palo santo, or the little cortexes of spurge provoked the sweat of relief on his skin. They would leave him calm and clear. What he enjoyed the most was taking the resins out of trees, making them bleed deep, gummy ambers with which he was sure he could mend an
ything: the bones that Nana fixed, the trunks of flowering guava trees, after-pains of the soul; delicate ointments to weatherproof wood, avoid leaks and humidity stains on roofs, shape table legs, make a body breathe. The resins could do it all.
When Nana retired, she dedicated herself completely to healing damaged whores, and Lucas, already of age, was hired as the municipal gardener. Nobody had ever seen vegetation grow with such beauty under human hands. Lucas, the son of the washerwoman from the islands, transformed the naked plaza of a salinized town into a divine garden, where pansies would grow in the sunlight, duendes and cohitres cohabited without wilting under fruit trees, pink and yellow oak trees stood up tall in the direction of an eternally grey sky. Now it was adorned with a paradise of plants and an elegance that he had made. All the high-society ladies would give him work in their homes; he would perform beauties in their interior patios, in the entrance walks; he would plant and take care of royal palm trees, coconut trees; he was able to combine azaleas with gardenias with rosebushes and different colors of hibiscus; he could braid spiny bougainvillea so they would hang their manes over the terraces and the roof tops; he could fill the house with the smell of his ointments for mahogany tables and for old slanting roofs; he would shine the floor with the amber resins of thousands of trees that he distilled in the back rooms of his little house in Patagonia. He arrived and left everything smooth, fresh to the touch, slippery; he would protect surfaces from the grey ocean spray that covered the town with crystallized vapors, and he would smooth the wrinkles of time, giving back the secret palpitations to each trunk or torso that had the opportunity to receive the gift of his fingers. Lucas’ fingers. Some circumspect women had surprised themselves dreaming of Lucas’ fingers; that he would pull from deep inside them all the dryness that had been so well stored up inside, that he would undo them in rivers of succulent amber, dense musks smelling of deep and secret fragances, those from which they protected themselves to preserve their respectability.
And it was strange how people treated Lucas, because no one except Nana and the little Patagonian whores could look him in the face or let their eyes slide down the rest of his body. Almost no one held his stare, almost no one remarked on his features, the dark and sweet almonds that were his eyes, nor how wide and remote his smile was. No one, except the whores, noticed how wide his back was, fibrous like ausubo wood; nor the perfect roundness of his mounds of flesh, there, above the thighs, nor the deep mahogany color of his skin, always fresh like the shade. And nobody even dared to slant the tail end of a glance down to the extremity of the root that announced itself succulently between his pant legs; the wide knot that promised trunks of dark and succulent flesh, soft little hairs smelling of sea grapes. He didn’t even notice how beautiful he was, because like everyone else, his attention was fixed on the precision of his hands. His fingers, long like a bird’s, ended in curved points, with diluted crescents at the bottom of each nail. These were always bordered by fragments of earth, and grooved sometimes by the very fine fibers of keratin that created different and masterful textures on each one. The palms were wide, fleshy, with calluses on each finger. Deep veins and subtle cuts furrowed them on both sides, forming little destiny maps on the whole ripe acerola-colored surface. But, surprisingly, Lucas’ hands were soft in their strength and precision; shy and soft like when he was a child and carried basins of shit to his grandmother’s house; shy, soft, and flighty in their strong pressure on things. All eyes that stumbled on Lucas looked at his hands, just like they only focused on the little gold chains clinking on the ankles of whores.