I look in your eyes, but you don’t recognize me,
how long life seems to you in this tiny body,
your dirty hair, just as dirty as your father’s.
Oh, sweet girl with a wolf’s eyes,
I’d tear my skin off to wrap you in it,
girl-kalashnikov,
how many lives dwell in your finger-trigger,
in your fingers that abandon you every night to belong to others.
Oh, sweet girl who learned to say horror,
show me your tongue thirsty for words,
I’ll show you my empty palms, I’ll kneel before you,
girl-goddess, I know you won’t shoot.
I know you won’t shoot your father in a house in the suburbs,
I know that it’s rage for you when you cry among the rubble
every time a body collapses,
every time a bird dies, I know.
You’ll think that the room is too big,
you’ll think that the world is an enormous room
where a father and a daughter alone caress a beard or dirty hair.
Oh, sweet girl, I know it’s not hate,
I know it’s not hate, it’s the heat of the deserts
that burns the soles of your feet,
that leaves an ancient cold in your bones.
No sweet girl, girl-wolf, girl-kalashnikov, don’t shoot,
don’t shoot,
let me imagine that this house in the suburbs exists for both of us.
I might wish for example that you woke here,
perhaps you and I, for example,
in this room, for example,
in this house in the suburbs, for example.
Ángelo Néstore (Lecce, 1986) was born in Italy and now lives in his adopted city of Malaga. He came to Spain for the rst time at twenty one to learn Spanish and decided to stay and finish his studies. He is a poet, actor, and professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Malaga, in addition to teaching Mandarin Chinese. He successfully defended his PhD thesis on Comics Translation and Queer Theory. He currently directs the Irreconciliables International Poetry Festival in Malaga (with Violeta Niebla) and the feminist poetry press La Señora Dalloway (with Carmen G. de la Cueva & Martín de Arriba). In 2017, he published his first book of poems, Adán o nada (Bandaàparte Editores). That same year, he won the XXXII Premio de Poesía Hiperión with Actos impuros (Ediciones Hiperión). In addition to his work as a poet, he is a translator into Italian of works such as the poetry of María Eloy- García or graphic novels of, among others, Isabel Franc, Andreu Martín & Enrique Sánchez Abulí.
Lawrence Schimel (New York, 1971) is a bilingual author and translator living in Madrid. Writing in both Spanish and English, he has published over one hundred books as author or anthologist, in many different genres. He is also a prolific literary translator, including over 20 poetry collections, most recently Nothing is Lost: Selected Poems by Jordi Doce (Shearsman, 2017), Tonalpohuali by Jeannette L. Clariond (Abstract Editions, 2017), I’d ask you to join me by the Río Bravo and weep but you should know neither river nor tears remain by Jorge Humberto Chávez (Shearsman, 2016), and Hamartia by Carmen Boullosa (White Pine Press, 2019). His translations of poems appear regularly in journals such as Modern Poetry in Translation, Words without Borders, Pleiades, etc.