I’ve been a time-/ wasting machine by Ignacio Fernández de Palleja – translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin


 
 
I’ve been a time-
wasting machine,
a type of mechanism
science fiction
does not care for,
a guy that yearns for
the parties he hasn’t been to
and the neighborhoods
he’s never visited,
the life he hasn’t lived,
I’m someone that breathes with impulses of something he doesn’t know
and disdains a little,
I’m someone that’s not blind
but can no longer read,
someone clumsy, limited, latent,
waiting for who knows what
not going to the neighborhood parties and writing it all down for no one.
 
 
 
Fernández de Palleja was born Uruguay, in the Department of Treinta y Tres. For the past 20 years he has been living in Maldonado, where he teaches Spanish and Portuguese in high schools and other institutes. Fernández de Palleja is the author of five poetry books including Poemas que le dieron la vuelta al sol (Civiles, 2016), Poemas visitantes (Julieta cartonera, 2016), and Poemas lingües (Bestial Barracuda Babilónica, 2014). He is also author of several short story collections including En negro y negro (Estuario, 2012) and Educación (MC Editora, 2018), which won the Lussich Award from the Maldonado Municipality. He is the recipient of other awards, like the first prize in the 2017 Julio C Da Rosa Short Story National Award. He is the co-organizer of the reading and music cycle Pandepoeta. For more information on the author please visit: fernandezdepalleja.wordpress.com 

Laura Cesarco Eglin is the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by Hilda Hilst, (co•im•press), which won the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. Her translations from Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician have appeared in a variety of journals, including Timber, Exchanges, Modern Poetry in Translation, Waxwing, Eleven Eleven, The Massachusetts Review, Cordella Magazine, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and The Puritan. Cesarco Eglin is the author of five poetry collections, including Calling Water by Its Name (trans. Spanbauer; Mouthfeel Press), Occasions to Call Miracles Appropriate (The Lune), and Reborn in Ink (trans. Kercheval and Jagoe; The Word Works). She is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books.